


Goodnight, Sweetheart

by simoneallen



Category: Quantum Leap, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 21:49:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simoneallen/pseuds/simoneallen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A TOS/Quantum Leap crossover set during City on the Edge of Forever</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodnight, Sweetheart

Spock paused outside the captain’s quarters. He wasn’t sure if what he planned to do was an advisable course of action or not. His captain, his friend, was suffering and in need of comfort. He wanted to help but he was unsure if he was capable of doing so. He stared at the door for a moment then reached up to press the buzzer on the wall beside it. He would at least try. For Jim, he would try.

“Come,” said a voice from inside.

The doors slid open and he stepped through. Kirk looked up from where he was sitting on the bunk, a book open on his lap, and gave him a wan smile. “Spock,” he said. “What can I do for you?” 

Spock’s sharp eyes noted lines around Kirk’s eyes that he had not previously seen there, the weary slope of his shoulders. The Human looked as though he hadn’t had a moment’s sleep since they’d got back from the planet they’d designated Gateway and, despite the smile, there was a haunted look on his face that Spock wished he could simply erase, however illogical that desire might be. 

“I came to ascertain your condition,” he ventured cautiously.

Kirk gave a mirthless chuckle. “You didn’t need to do that, Spock,” he said. He picked the book from his lap and placed it on the bed before swinging his legs around to the side of the bunk and resting his forearms on his thighs. He sighed wearily as he stared at his boots for a moment. 

“I’ll be fine,” he added, the words as much to convince himself as his first officer. Then looked back up at Spock and made an attempt at a slightly brighter smile.

Spock stared at him for a long moment. Kirk looked so desolate; so alone and in need of a friend and suddenly Spock wished more than anything that he wasn’t so constrained by Vulcan’s - and his own - standards of behaviour. He wished he could go to him and take him in his arms and tell him that everything would be all right, but he wouldn’t; he couldn’t. That step was one he could never take.

“If there is anything I can…” he began, rather stiffly even to his own ears. 

Kirk waved the words away. “I’m fine, Spock,” he interrupted. “I just need to be on my own for a while.”

Spock hesitated. Something inside him whispered that being alone was the very last thing Kirk needed, but he didn’t know what to do other than to respect his captain’s wishes. He felt overwhelmed by his failure to be an adequate friend to this so precious Human. He couldn’t help him, he didn’t know how, so he turned and left. 

~*~*~*~

Kirk stared desperately at the door as it closed. God, he couldn’t even talk to Spock any more. He lifted his hands to rub his eyes. Tired. He was so tired. But every time he closed his eyes he saw it happening again, unfurling in slow motion while he stood there and did nothing to stop it. 

Over and over again, he saw the car slam into her and her crumpled body fall onto the cold, hard New York Street, broken beyond repair. Each time it was the same, what he said, what he felt - the joy of a moment earlier transforming into heartbreak, despair and, above all, guilt. The guilt was the worst, a crushing weight, deeper even than the sorrow, a guilt he didn’t think would ever stop eating away at him. He would do anything to change what had happened, to make it never have been.

 

~*~*~*~

 

The first thing he was aware of was that he felt strange. Of course, it always felt strange, but this time something seemed even more out of place than usual. He looked around warily, knowing from experience that it was best to acclimatise slowly. His surroundings looked as odd as he felt but at least he seemed to be alone, which was always a lot better than trying to act normally when he had no way of knowing what normal was. 

He was standing in a small room with a desk in the corner and a kind of mesh divider over to his right, beyond which he could see the end of a bed. The wall beyond that was hung with deep, red material on which were displayed unfamiliar items that made a cold knot of fear form inside him. They looked like weapons of some sort but not of any type he’d ever seen before. He shivered. Weapons always made him feel ill at ease, but it was more than that - something was very wrong here. 

He turned around quickly and made his way towards one of the two doors to the room that were inset to the walls. It slid smoothly open as he approached it. The unexpectedness of it made him start slightly, but what lay beyond looked like a fairly standard bathroom so he stepped inside. As he’d hoped there was a mirror on the wall and he walked up to it. 

He stared at his reflection. Dark eyes looked back at him from beneath sharply slanting eyebrows. The face in the mirror was all planes and angles above a blue shirt with a black collar and some sort of insignia on the chest. He peered more closely and his heart leapt into his mouth. He held his breath as he turned his head slowly to one side and then the other. He watched in the mirror as a hand with fingers much longer and more delicate looking than his own slowly reached up to touch the tip of a pointed ear. 

“Oh boy,” he breathed.

 

~*~*~*~

_Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr Sam Beckett led an elite group of scientists into the desert to develop a top-secret project known as Quantum Leap. Pressured to prove his theories or lose funding, Dr Beckett prematurely stepped into the project accelerator, and vanished.  
He awoke to find himself in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and facing a mirror image that was not his own. Fortunately, contact with his own time was maintained through brain-wave transmissions with Al, the project observer, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Dr Beckett can see and hear. Trapped in the past, Dr Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home._

 

~*~*~*~

Captain James T Kirk sat uneasily in his command chair as they approached the planet that seemed to be at the centre of the waves of temporal disturbance rippling through the galaxy. He glanced at the chrono on the arm of the chair and sighed. Since the phenomenon had first been picked up a little over a week ago, the science department had been working around the clock to try to pinpoint its cause. It had been largely due to their dedication and devotion to duty that they’d arrived here, at this previously unvisited, unmapped planet, as quickly as they had. 

Since the space/time distortions had first been picked up, the ship’s science officer hadn’t slept, hadn’t even found time to meditate as far as Kirk knew. So, once the planet had been found and the course laid in, Kirk had ordered him to his quarters. Spock had resisted, as the captain had known he would, but he had his argument well prepared. No logic, he’d said with a pointed look, could be found in approaching a planet that could be the scientific find of the century with a science officer who was too tired to be suitable to lead a potential landing party. The Vulcan’s eyebrows had shot up at the thinly-veiled threat, but he’d gone to his quarters without further argument. Ideally, it would have been for longer than a couple of hours, but they were here now, and the disturbances were getting stronger, buffeting the ship as it approached orbit.

Kirk palmed the control on the arm of his chair. “Mr Spock to the bridge.” 

There was an uncharacteristic pause and the captain frowned. Even when by all rights he should have been asleep or deep in meditation, Spock seemed to get to the intercom within seconds every time he was called. Kirk had from time to time pondered whether his first officer might actually sleep with one elegantly pointed ear pressed against the comm panel, poised to respond to his commanding officer’s every word the moment it was uttered. 

“Spock?” he repeated.

“Yes?”

Kirk’s frown deepened. It was Spock’s voice but it sounded nervous and unsure, which was not a tone he was used to hearing in the Vulcan’s precise speech. 

“I need you on the bridge,” he repeated.

“Oh, uh, yeah. I’ll be right there.”

The connection was cut and Kirk stared comm panel in disbelief. Did Spock just say ‘yeah’? What the hell was that all about?

 

~*~*~*~

 

Sam sat heavily in the chair behind the desk as he flicked off the switch that had connected him to the disembodied voice. It was lucky, he reflected, that the communication device lit up when someone called, or he’d never have found the source of the voice that had invaded the room.

He looked around again, barely contained panic growing inside him. Usually when he leaped into someone else’s life, that life had the courtesy to be at least somewhat recognisable to him, even if he did discover that as far as everyone else was concerned he was a woman, a little boy, or even on one occasion he preferred not to think too deeply about, a chimpanzee. But this - this was something else. 

“Al,” he groaned, “where are you?”

“Please repeat your command,” a strangely mechanical female voice responded, and Sam’s eyes flew open. The light on the desk in front of him was glowing, much as the communication panel had. 

“Um, where am I?” he tried cautiously.

“You are on board the Starship Enterprise,” the voice informed him. “Captain James T Kirk commanding.”

Sam gulped. Seriously, what the hell was this? 

His mind worked quickly through the possible scenarios and only came up with two that were plausible. The first was that he’d once again landed in a TV show. He looked around. Real walls, no cameras, no middle aged man pretending to be Captain Galaxy and referring to him in loudly jovial tones as ‘Future Boy!’. Ok, so probably not a TV show. The second was that, however impossible it seemed, he’d jumped into the future. His mind boggled at the thought. 

Jumping through time and trying to pretend to be someone he wasn’t was confusing even without what Al called the ‘Swiss-cheesing’ of his memory, an unwelcome and unpredicted side-effect of time travel. But at least there had always been the constant of only being able to jump within the years of his own lifetime. If there was any comfort to be had, it was being fairly certain he wasn’t likely to get eaten by a dinosaur any time soon. He looked over at the strange gargoyle-like sculpture by the bed. There might not be dinosaurs here, but he sure as hell wasn’t in Kansas any more.

The memory problems he’d been left with meant Sam had needed Al to explain his own theories of time travel to him. It was all about seeing life as like a ball of string, with one end representing his birth and the other his death. All other points on the string were able to randomly intersect, allowing him to jump to different points in time but only within his own lifetime. It had all made perfect sense until he found himself in the middle of the Civil War. The explanation for jumping outside his lifespan on that particular occasion had been a direct genetic link to the man he’d jumped into. He reached up to touch the tip of an ear that felt rounded to him, despite what the mirror showed - he didn’t think genetics could be the answer this time, but whatever it was would have to wait. He turned his attention back to the situation at hand. 

“Um. How do I get to the bridge?” he said loudly into the room, feeling rather ridiculous talking to thin air. The screen on the desk immediately sprang to life. Sam leaned forward as an internal schematic appeared. His panic faded away as the physicist marvelled at the sleek wonder of the ship being shown to him. The image showed nothing of the workings of the vessel - security he guessed - but they showed him where the bridge was. He got up and headed to the door, setting off at a run down the corridor. He might be mistaken, but he had a feeling that when his presence was requested on the bridge, presumably by the captain, the man had meant ‘now’, and he was already running way behind time. 

 

~*~*~*~

Spock turned slowly on the spot, part of his mind quickly assessing his surroundings while another searched for possible theories as to why one moment he’d been in his quarters, the next transported to a place he had never seen before.

The room he found himself in gave off an overwhelming impression of empty whiteness. There was nothing in it beyond the platform on which he was standing and a table in front of him, also entirely white. Beyond the table was a doorway and Spock started towards it, only to stop when it opened and a strangely costumed, seemingly Human male came in, his red suit and pink hat a sudden flash of colour against all the whiteness.

The strange being put what seemed to be an old-fashioned cigar into his mouth and regarded Spock quizzically before holding out his hand. “Admiral Al Calavicci,” he said around the smoking cylinder.

Spock reached out and took the hand in Human fashion. “Commander Spock,” he offered, keeping to the barest of facts in what might be a hostile situation. “To where have you transported me?” 

Al frowned and plucked the cigar out of his mouth again. As always, the new arrival in the Waiting Room had taken on the illusion of Sam’s physical aura, as Sam would likewise be seen as the person he had replaced. But the question was not a typical reaction of someone who had just been torn away from their life to something completely unfamiliar to them.

“Transported?” he questioned suspiciously. “What do you mean by transported? And why are you so calm? This place normally gives pretty much everyone the collywobbles.” 

People usually reacted in one of two ways when they found themselves in the Project Quantum Leap Waiting Room, they either panicked or they froze. This guy was not only doing neither but also appeared to accept without questioning that you could vanish from one place and reappear in another in an instant.

Spock raised his eyebrow. “I am here,” he said, “therefore it is logical to assume I was brought here using some kind of transportation device.”

Al pushed his fedora back on his head. “Transportation device,” he mused. “Well, I’ll be damned and go to hell.” 

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Kidnapping is indeed a criminal offence,” he agreed, “although whether or not its punishment in your culture is eternal damnation, is not something I am aware of.”

Al raised an eyebrow back and waved the smoking cigar in the air. “Funny,” he acknowledged, then moved back towards the door. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised, needing to try to find Sam before he attempted to get any information out of whoever this person was who’d taken on his form.

“Wait,” Spock called after him. “I have a question.

Al paused expectantly.

“What planet is this?” Spock asked. He could not detect any of the engine noise that was apparent to Vulcan ears on virtually any space-faring vessel so it seemed most likely he was on a planet somewhere.

Al raised his eyebrows. He’d thought this new visitor seemed quite balanced and rational, but maybe he’d misjudged. “It’s all right,” he said soothingly, “You’re still on planet Earth. There are no aliens here and you haven’t been abducted for experimentation.” He paused as he remembered a fear occasionally raised by particularly nervous waiting room residents. “And I have no wish to impregnate you,” he added.

Spock raised his eyebrows. “I am…gratified,” he decided on as the admiral backed out of the room, regarding him as if he were, as McCoy might put it, ‘several currants short of a bun’.

Once he was outside Al strode through the project complex to find Gooshi in the imaging room holding one of his ever-present clipboards and looking rather uncharacteristically enervated. “Got him,” the project’s head programmer announced as soon as he walked into the room.

“It’s about time,” Al flung at him as he walked towards the chamber that would project his holographic form to wherever Gooshi had finally managed to track down Sam.

“Uh, Admiral,” Gooshi said. “Before you go, there’s something you should know.” 

 

~*~*~*~

 

“Captain,” Sulu’s voice interrupted Kirk’s momentary wondering about Spock, who seemed to be taking an inordinately long time to reach the bridge. “We’re approaching the planet now.” The helmsman looked from the main view screen down to the instrument panel in front of him. “Orbit in three point four minutes.”

Kirk pushed his concern for his first officer out of his head. “Very good, Mr Sulu,” he responded, his attention now firmly on the view screen and the orange-coloured planet that seemed to be the source of the phenomenon they’d been sent to investigate. 

“Move her in,” he ordered. “Carefully does it.”

He hunched forward in the centre seat, his senses on high alert, poised to detect any sign the ship wasn’t standing up to what she was being asked to do. He glanced over at the engineering station. It was a sign of the gravity of the situation they found themselves in that Scotty was on the bridge. Given the choice, the chief engineer would never leave his engines - might sleep curled up next to them if he could get away with it - but manoeuvring the ship close enough to the planet to get the readings they needed was putting the control circuits under such a strain that he had decided he needed to monitor them from the bridge station.

The turbolift doors opened behind him and Kirk glanced around to see Spock. The first officer stepped onto the bridge then paused as he looked around the place almost as though he’d never seen it before. The captain frowned again just as Spock seemed to catch the eye of the lieutenant manning the science console. He started towards his station and Kirk opened his mouth to question him, but a movement over at engineering caught his attention before he had a chance to speak. He ignored the thread of worry and looked around to meet the engineer’s eyes. 

“Control circuits threatening to overload, Captain,” Scotty told him, the concern clear in his voice.

Kirk nodded. “Understood, engineer.” 

He pushed himself up from his seat and turned towards the science station. If it was anyone else but Spock he’d give them a moment to get up to speed on the situation but Spock never needed that consideration. At least, not usually.

“Mr Spock,” he said, walking over to stand by the Vulcan. “We have to plot these areas of turbulence.” 

Sam’s eyes flicked nervously towards the man in a gold version of the shirt he himself was wearing then back to the strange equipment in front of him. His brain worked quickly. From what he’d gathered so far and however impossible it might seem, he was an alien being called Spock, this must be Kirk, the seemingly Human captain who’d called him to the bridge, and they were on a ship in orbit around a planet in the middle of god knows where. He tried to stop his head from spinning. 

His eyes flicked back to Kirk again. “I believe we’ll have them plotted in a few more orbits, Captain,” he tried, hoping it would do as a delaying tactic until he at least had some idea of what was going on. 

Kirk frowned and had just opened his mouth, intending to question Spock further, when there was a sudden explosion from behind him. The captain turned just in time to see his helmsman fall to the floor. He was at his command chair and flicking the comm switch before he even had time to think about it. “Doctor McCoy to bridge,” he commanded, using the minimum words possible, knowing McCoy would pick up on the urgency without needing it spelled out. 

He was at Sulu’s side a moment later and fell to his knees beside the unconscious officer. Around him his bridge crew carried on doing their jobs with complete efficiency, despite what had just happened. He snapped out orders even as he reached to check the helmsman’s pulse.

Sam’s eyes flicked in horror from the man lying prone on the floor to the information on the console in front of him. The console was unfamiliar, but the equations flying across it weren’t, at least not entirely. He was a genius, the most talented physicist of his generation if not countless generations. His memory might be hampered by the gaps left by time travel but time travel was still his speciality, the science that had preoccupied most of his adult life, and he knew what he was seeing. The enormity of it momentarily paralysed him, rooting him to the spot.

“We’re actually passing through ripples in time,” he breathed incredulously.

He felt the captain’s eyes on him and tore his attention away from the equations scrolling across the screen to focus on the situation at hand. Kirk was gesturing to female crew member to tend to the injured man while he moved with alacrity to the centre station, continuing to take updates on what had just happened as the officers around him gathered data.

Somewhere through Sam’s damaged memory came the information that he held a medical degree. He flew across the bridge and bent down at the side of the young Asian man lying on the floor. He was unconscious but he was breathing. Sam reached out to grab his wrist. His pulse was fast - too fast - and his heartbeat was unsteady. Sam turned to speak to the captain, who was conferring with an older man in red. This man needed medical help and he needed it now. 

At that moment, as if in answer to his unspoken thought, the doors to the lift whooshed open again and a man wearing the blue version of the uniform and carrying what looked like a strangely old-fashioned medical bag ran onto the bridge. He was crouched beside Sam in seconds, giving him an odd look as he reached out to the patient. Sam moved back to let the man he assumed was the Doctor McCoy called for earlier take over and looked up as the captain joined them.

“Bones,” Kirk said. “How bad?”

“There’s some heart flutter,” McCoy answered. “I’d better risk some cordrazine.” 

The captain took in a sharp breath. “That’s tricky stuff,” he began. “Are you sure..”

Sam watched as the doctor took out what looked like a hypodermic without a needle and pressed it against the younger man’s arm. It hissed and the patient’s eyes immediately flickered open, there was even the trace of a smile on his face.

McCoy looked up at the captain. “You were about to make a medical comment, Jim?” he asked mildly.

Kirk looked slightly chagrined. “Who me, Doctor?” he answered, relief running through him. He looked curiously at his first officer, who was still hovering over the injured man but Scotty interrupted again. The engineer’s timing was certainly impeccable today.

“We’re guiding around most of the time ripples now, Cap’n,” the Scottish tones informed him. “All plotted but one, and we’re coming up on that now.”

The captain moved back towards the command chair and it was the doctor’s turn to look askance at the figure in blue still hovering over the injured helmsman.

Sam shifted uncomfortably as the sharp eyes fixed on him. It was almost as though the man could see through the remaining aura of Spock, which should be all that was perceptible, to the body and mind of the time traveller who had taken his place. 

“So, Mr Spock,” the doctor questioned conversationally. “Might this be concern for the well-being of one of your shipmates you’re showing?”

Sam didn’t know how to answer. Should he not be showing concern for the injuries of another? What kind of a person had he leaped into? He was saved from having to answer as the doctor’s attention was quickly diverted by a groan from his now grimacing patient. 

“Lie still a minute while I get someone to help you to sickbay,” McCoy ordered the younger man, then flashed a glance at Sam. “Always knew you had it in you,” he teased, then got up, hypo in hand. He moved to the nearest console and started to pack his medial supplies back into the bag. 

Suddenly everything lurched. 

As Sam looked on the doctor was thrown forward over the console. He heard the hiss as the hypo in the medic’s hand was thrust up against his stomach, emptying its contents into his own body.

“Bones!” came the cry from the captain as he ran across the deck, reaching the doctor at the same time Sam did, each of them grabbing an arm. McCoy shook them off with a strength that belied his slim frame. He pushed them hard.

“Killers! Murderers! Assassins! I won’t let you.” 

“Bones,” the captain pleaded, holding his hands out in a gesture intended to sooth. But the doctor looked around manically, sweat pouring from his brow as bloodshot eyes flicked madly from face to face, not seeming to recognise any of them.

Sam made another grab for him, but was again easily shaken off. He thought he saw the captain give him an unfathomable look of confusion as the doctor ran for the lift. The moment was lost as the two of them quickly pounded after him. They nearly reached him, but the doors of the lift opened just at the wrong moment and the doctor slipped inside.

Kirk thumped the door in anger and frustration, then turned to fix a glare on his first officer. “Why the hell did you let him go?” he demanded. 

Sam met his gaze and didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” he managed to get out, “he just slipped through my fingers.”

He shifted uncomfortably under the captain’s searching gaze. He had no idea what he was doing wrong but obviously something about his behaviour was telling these people, this man in particular, that everything wasn’t as it should be. He looked around desperately and suddenly, as if in answer to an unspoken prayer, there was a familiar noise. Just behind the captain a door of light opened and a figure stepped through.

“Sam,” Al hissed, waving a hand holding a fat cigar in the direction of the door. “Get out of here as quickly as you can. I’ll meet you in Spock’s quarters.”

Sam’s eyes flicked from the captain standing in front of him to the hologram only he could see. Al waggled his eyebrows and started jabbing at the control terminal in his hand. 

Kirk’s eyes narrowed and he followed Spock’s gaze, looking over his shoulder to see nothing there. 

“Ok, what the hell is going on?” he demanded.

Sam focussed on the captain. “Sir, I…”

“Request permission to leave the bridge,” Al provided automatically, his experience in the Navy kicking in. As he spoke, he finally hit the right button and a door of light flashed opened behind him. Taking one last look around at the bridge and giving a disbelieving but impressed whistle, he disappeared as quickly as he’d arrived.

Sam repeated the words Al had offered.

Kirk stared at his first officer. The request must be something to do with either McCoy or the anomaly but he couldn’t afford the time to question it right now. He’d just have to trust him, and there was no one he trusted more than Spock. 

“Permission granted,” he said quickly, then moved back towards the centre seat as his first officer left the bridge. 

He glanced up and frowned at the ‘lift doors as they closed. Spock was not behaving like himself and he was concerned but that was something he’d have to tackle later. Right now, finding McCoy was the priority.

He hit the comm panel. “All decks, this is the captain.” he announced. “Security alert. Dr McCoy has been injured and is not himself. I want him found and restrained.”

~*~*~*~

 

Spock frowned as Al pressed the off switch, cutting off the sound of the female voice he had identified as belonging to a ‘super hybrid’ computer he called Ziggy dictating notes from a project identified as Quantum Leap and belonging to the latter part of the 20th century.

“Do you expect me to take this recording as evidence of the truth of what you have told me, Admiral Calavicci?” 

“Ziggy tends to over-egg his role in the whole project,” Al shrugged, “but Gooshi’s diary is a pretty accurate record and I’ve kept logs of every leap Sam’s made.”

Spock folded his arms across his chest. “It is most implausible.”

Al sighed and walked towards him. He needed to get Spock on side so he could get to Sam armed with at least the basic information he’d need to keep himself safe and undetected while they figured out why he was where he was. He reached inside his jacket to pull out the most effective means of proving what he said.

Spock stared disbelievingly into the mirror being held up in front of his face. The reflection that looked back at him was of a man of about 40 with brown hair longer than he wore his own. He peered a little closer, he noted the reflection bore a passing resemblance to former United Federation of Planets president, Admiral Jonathan Archer. He reached up to touch his ears, feeling the points even as the mirror image felt rounded edges.

“Fascinating.”

Al watched the newcomer examining Sam’s face in the mirror. “Over here,” he said after a few minutes, pointing towards the door. They made it a rule at Quantum Leap not to allow ‘leapees’ to leave the Waiting Room unless it was absolutely necessary but he considered it was in this case. He had a feeling equations and matrix diagrams might have more power to persuade Spock he was telling the truth than any words he might find and he had an idea they were going to need all the help they could get on this one.

 

~*~*~*~

 

Sam jumped up from Spock’s bunk, where he’d been waiting for Al for what felt like hours but had in fact been less than 30 minutes, as the hologram finally reappeared. 

“Where’ve you been?” he demanded.

Al plucked the ever-present cigar from his mouth and peered around Spock’s quarters. “It took a while to convince Spock to cough up anything helpful,” he said peering at the weapons hung on the wall, “even considering he’s the quickest study I’ve ever met.” He whistled as he looked around the room. “This is amazing, Sam. A real honest to goodness spaceship.”

“Starship,” Sam corrected and the hologram shot him a glare from beneath the brim of the pale pink fedora that adorned his head, the uncharacteristically muted shade serving to highlight the startling red of his suit, which doubtless was the intention.

“Know-it-all,” Al accused then stuck the cigar back in his mouth and folded his arms across his chest as he looked Sam up and down speculatively. “Now this,” he added, “is almost better than the time you were a hooker.”

Sam flopped down on the bed and lay back, covering his eyes with his hands. “Al, enough already,” he protested. “I was an undercover cop, not a hooker, and how does this even begin to compare?”

“You’re a little green man!” Al exclaimed, partly in genuine delight, partly because it was his self-imposed responsibility to try to keep Sam’s spirits up, wherever and whenever he found himself. 

Sam propped himself up on his elbows and glared at him. “Why am I here, Al?” he asked with exaggerated patience.

The hologram jabbed at the terminal in his hand some more. “We don’t know yet.”

Sam let his body fall back on the bed and closed his eyes with a groan. “I should have guessed,” he grumbled. Considering the technology at their beck and call, it really was ridiculous the number of times Al turned up with nothing whatsoever of any help to tell him.

Al moved to hover over the bed next to him in as close to an approximation of a seating position as a hologram could manage. “It’s the 23rd century,” he began. “Your name is Spock, half Vulcan first officer of the Starship Enterprise. He’s vegetarian so lay off the hot dogs. Oh,” he added, reaching out to wave a hand around the vicinity of Sam’s left ear, “and these guys don’t show emotion, so no smiling, no laughing, no grumbling, and no talking to yourself.” 

Sam opened one eye and peered up at him. “You’re kidding?” he said in disbelief, not just at the sparsity of the information but also its content. Apart from anything else, talking to himself, or at least the appearance of doing so, was pretty much unavoidable when you were a time travelling scientist with only a hologram no one else could see for company.

“I gotta get back,” was Al’s answer. 

As answers went, it really was lacking a certain something in Sam’s opinion. He sat up abruptly. “You’re leaving?” he exclaimed. “You only just got here and you haven’t told me anything yet!”

Al smirked. “Tina,” he said lasciviously, “is preparing something special for this evening.” 

His eyes took on a faraway expression as he pondered the possible treats awaiting him courtesy of his girlfriend, who may or may not be destined to become the latest in a long series of wives. 

“Something with strawberries, champagne and a bunny girl outfit.” 

Sam stared at him. “Do you ever think of anything else?” he demanded.

“Not if I can help it,” Al retorted, tipping his hat back on his head and wiggling his eyebrows. He started poking at the computer interface in his hand again before looking back up at Sam. 

“Besides,” he added. “Spock isn’t giving much up in the waiting room, so I better get back, give him some more of the old Calavicci persuasive magic.”

Sam bit back the retort on the tip of his tongue. He could see the concern in Al’s eyes however much his friend tried to hide it. “How can I be in the future?” he demanded. “Al, how is this even possible?”

Al sighed. “We don’t know,” he admitted. “Gooshi took ages to track you down and Ziggy’s readings were all over the place.”

“What about Spock?”

The hologram groaned. “Like blood from a stone,” he admitted. “After I showed him Ziggy, he accepted quantum leaping as a scientific possibility, but apparently the idea of you being moved around by some unknown power to put right what once went wrong is…” he tilted his head to one side and raised one rounded eyebrow in an obvious imitation, “…‘an illogical concept that only Humans would give any credence to’.” 

He shook his head and gave a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll be back as soon as I can tell you any more.” He paused and pointed towards a cupboard inset into the wall. 

“In there is a small black box called a tricorder,” he said. “You can use it to access the ship’s library. Look up Vulcan behaviour and then just do what Captain Kirk tells you to until I get back.” With that he was gone.

“Mr Spock to transporter room 4. Urgent. Mr Spock, please report to transporter room 4,” the intercom broke into life.

Sam stared at it for a moment then strode over to the cupboard Al had pointed out. Sure enough, there was the black ‘tricorder’. He pulled it out and headed for the door. He would read up as much as he could while attempting to find Transporter Room 4, whatever the hell a ‘Transporter Room 4’ was.

 

~*~*~*~

 

The planet was as eerie as anywhere Sam had ever found himself. The wind whistled around them and there were ruins as far as the eye could see. The place would be creepy even if they weren’t here to chase down a guy who apparently thought they were all out to kill him and was more than likely to try to get in first if he got the chance. 

According to Captain Kirk the substance McCoy had accidentally pumped into his system was unpredictable. Two drops would save a man’s life, but a hundred times that amount was going around the doctor’s body and the only thing they knew about levels that high was that they were likely to make someone paranoid and dangerous. It wasn’t really what Sam wanted to hear. 

He wondered if finding McCoy was the reason he was here, but frowned at the idea. The technology available to a 24th century starship crew surely meant they had far more chance of finding and curing McCoy than some interloper from a 20th century experiment gone wrong could ever have.

Sam kept his eyes fixed on the tricorder. He was trying to take in as much information about the Enterprise and its crew as he could. He thanked his lucky stars he was a fast reader because there was a hell of a lot of information accessible through the little black box. He looked up, suddenly getting a feeling he was being watched and saw the woman who’d been on the bridge earlier, Uhura he thought her name was, staring at him. She was holding a tricorder as well. She looked pointedly at it then back at him. Sam froze. She seemed to be expecting him to do or say something, but he had no idea what. 

Uhura cleared her throat when the science officer showed no sign of reporting what his tricorder must have picked up as well as hers, but he remained silent. She frowned in confusion as she turned to Kirk.

“Captain,” she said, pointing her tricorder towards a large structure ahead of them that seemed to be just another ruin. “That object,” she said as Kirk turned to face her, “appears to be the source of the temporal waves.” 

“Explain,” Kirk said, frowning at the misshapen archway.

Sam balked as she looked to him as if asking permission to continue. He tried to look authoritative as he nodded and then hurriedly looked down at the tricorder. Apparently it could take readings of their surroundings as well as access the library. He experimentally pressed some buttons as Uhura continued to talk.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Kirk said when she’d finished her report. He moved closer to the stone structure, looking curiously at it. “How is it possible that this could be responsible?” he murmured.

“A question,” came a sudden booming voice. “Since before your sun burned hot in space and since before your race was born I have awaited a question.”

Kirk stared. The last thing he’d expected, despite the weird and wonderful things he’d been a witness to since he first went into space, was for a structure that looked like nothing more than a giant stone doughnut to start talking to him, but since it appeared to like questions…

“What are you?” he tried.

“I am the Guardian of Forever,” came the less than enlightening response.

Kirk tried questioning it again, with little more luck. It rapidly became clear that despite its claim to have been awaiting a question, the Guardian preferred riddles to straight answers once confronted with what it wanted. Even the captain’s attempts to find out if it was a machine or a being failed to get a clear response. “I am both and neither,” came the exasperating answer. “I am my own beginning, my own ending.”

Kirk looked around in frustration as Scotty, Uhura and the two security guards searched the area for signs of McCoy. The doctor was nowhere in sight and Kirk clamped down on a sudden, irrational urge to shout for his friend. He couldn’t give in to fear, even when it was one of his closest friends whose life was in danger. He had to keep a cool head and the best way he could help McCoy was to let his officers do their jobs while he did his. He set his jaw and turned back to the being, or machine, or whatever it was. 

Sam watched the play of emotions across Kirk’s face, irritation and frustration, followed by worry, followed by a renewed determination. It occurred to him that Kirk seemed very young to be a captain, but nevertheless there was something about the man that marked him out as a leader. Sam had seen it before in his dealings with the military - the strength and sense of purpose mixed with dynamism and a focussed drive. He found himself filled with his own determination to help this man find his friend and repair whatever was going wrong in his universe. 

He looked back to the tricorder and fixed on the readings he was now managing to take through a combination of trial and error and pure luck. This was truly astounding, a dream come true for a quantum physicist. The data he was getting from the structure was all pointing to one answer. 

“It’s a time portal, Captain,” he said, his amazement partly due to the information itself, partly due to the fact he’d managed to use the tricorder to gather it. “A gateway to other times and dimensions.” He frowned at the machine in his hands. “If I’m right.”

He stepped closer to the Guardian, fascinated by something that seemed by its very nature to do what he himself had spent years working towards, and years before that dreaming of. A thought flittered across his mind that maybe, finally, this was the leap that could hold the key to getting back to the home he hadn’t been able to find since this experiment began.

“Let me be your gateway,” the Guardian said, as if in answer to his thoughts, and Sam jumped as his heart began to pound. Why had he, a man lost in time, been brought here, to something that seemed to be at the very heart of time? Surely that couldn’t be just a coincidence. This couldn’t be just another leap.

Sam looked directly into the structure’s hollow centre, where a strange fog seemed to be forming. “Behold,” the Guardian continued, “a gateway to your own past…if you wish.”

The words caused Sam’s hammering heart to skip a beat and he glanced over at the captain, who spared him a curious look before turning back to the fascinating structure. It seemed, astoundingly, to be replaying the entire history of Earth. The images rolled past as if the watchers had pressed fast-forward at a movie theatre. Sam forced his face to remain impassive and tried to compel his heart rate to slow through sheer force of will.

Mesmerised, they watched as centuries of Earth history played out before their eyes. Empires rose and fell, wars were fought and lost, billions of people lived and died, all in the merest flash of time gone past.

“Strangely compelling, isn’t it?” Kirk offered, offering Sam a wan smile, “to step through there and lose oneself in another world?”

Sam met the gaze and saw a sadness in the hazel eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. What was it, he wondered, that made this man want, even for a moment, to lose himself in time? He wanted to reach out and hold on to him, tell him that being lost brought a whole raft of new problems even as it offered an escape from those you already had.

“Killers! Murderers!” came a shout from behind them, abruptly interrupting Sam’s thoughts. He dropped the arm he had begun to reach out and whirled around as McCoy shot out from behind a rock formation, angry red blotches standing out against a ghost-pale face. His eyes were wild and unfocussed, darting from side to side in fear and confusion. He ran straight at them but before either could react, Scotty leaped forward and grabbed him, quickly joined by two security guards. 

Kirk and Sam ran over to the group of men as they held on to the struggling doctor. There was a sudden pause as they stopped in front of them and Sam felt the weight of expectant eyes. Kirk’s attention appeared to be on him rather than McCoy. The captain’s eyes were narrowed as though he were waiting for Spock to do something. Sam looked nervously from side to side, hoping inspiration might suddenly appear - in the form of a hologram or otherwise - but no such luck. 

In the moment’s inaction, McCoy suddenly broke free, shaking off the security guards with a strength his wiry frame didn’t look capable of, the sort of strength only terror or desperation can produce. Sam looked on in horror as the medic ran full pelt at the Guardian, which was still playing its review of Human history. 

“Bones, no!” Kirk flung his body desperately after his friend, the tips of his fingers tantalisingly grazing the blue uniform shirt as the doctor leapt towards the portal - and vanished. 

Kirk landed in a sprawling heap on the dusty ground, his breath knocked clean out of him. “Where is he?” he yelled, staring at the space that a moment ago had contained his friend.

“He has passed into what was.” the Guardian intoned, its deep voice emotionless.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut. He’d never been the one to watch someone step into a time travel device and disappear before and he had a sudden jolt of insight into how it must have been for those he had left behind. He felt Kirk’s anguish at the suddenness of it, a suddenness that seemed somehow so final, as though stepping into the past ended your existence in the time where you belonged. He took a deep breath. Maybe it did, maybe that was why he never leaped home. It was a kind of cosmic punishment for meddling with things that nature never intended to be meddled with.

“Spock!” The voice cut into his thoughts and Sam turned his head to see the now righted captain staring at him as if he’d never seen him before. “Whatever it is, mister, snap out of it,” the captain barked and Sam took a step backwards at the sharp tone. Kirk looked…angry? No, not angry, hurt, anguished.

Kirk shook his head as he regarded his first officer and felt a stab of fear in his heart. Why hadn’t Spock used the neck pinch on McCoy or at least used his superior Vulcan strength to hold on to him? What was wrong with him? Both his closest friends seemed to be slipping away. Bones was lost in the mists of time and Spock - Spock seemed as though he were a different person. Kirk wasn’t surprised at how much the latter hurt, even managing to cut a sharp swathe through the worry about McCoy. He’d got used to worrying about Spock, it was something he dealt with day in day out.

“Captain,” Uhura was jabbing at the controls on her communicator. She raised her eyes to meet Kirk’s as he looked over. “I’ve lost contact with the ship,” she continued. “I was talking to them and suddenly it went dead.” She handed her communicator to the captain. “No static, just…nothing,” she said as he turned dials and pushed buttons he knew full well his chief communications officer would already have tried before she’d passed the device to him. 

“Kirk to Enterprise,” he said anyway. The silence that met the words cut him to the core and he felt a shudder pass through his body. There wasn’t even the static of interference to offer some comfort, just a wordless nothing that seemed to envelop them in a dread aloneness. He handed the communicator to Spock and turned towards Scotty.

Sam fiddled with the device in his hands, trying to look like he knew what he was doing, as Scotty tried his own device then shook his head at Kirk. 

“There’s nothin’ wrong with the communicators, sir,” the Scotsman confirmed, and Kirk turned as the Guardian began to speak once more.

“Your vessel, your beginning, all that you knew is gone,” it boomed. 

Kirk swallowed as he realised the import of what the Guardian was saying and what, or rather who, must have caused it. “McCoy,” he said slowly, “has somehow changed history.”

“You mean we’re stranded down here?” Scotty put in, horror running through his voice.

Sam felt his heart contract in his chest at the painful irony of being probably the only being ever to end up effectively trapped not just by one but by two interspatial temporal dilemmas. “With no past, no future,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut as he felt his throat constrict, the Human reaction overwhelming that of the scientist.

Kirk glanced at his first officer and quickly looked away again. Now, when he most needed Spock’s calm and logic, it seemed to have abandoned him, but he couldn’t even think about processing that right now. 

“Earth’s not there,” he heard himself saying as if from a great distance, the Guardian’s words echoing in his mind:

‘All that you know…gone.’

 

Kirk looked up at the stars he so loved and all of a sudden their twinkling mystery seemed to be mocking him, laughing at a man who would presume so much as to reach out to them and claim them as home.

“We’re all alone,” he whispered. 

‘I’m all alone.’

It was his greatest fear come to life and he felt a thread of panic rising from his gut, spreading through him. He ruthlessly shut it down. Ship or no ship, future or no future, he was still the captain. Duty came first, it always had and it always would. He took another look at Spock and firmly put the only emotion that had come close to breaking through his all-encompassing devotion to duty back into the internal box in which he stored it. First he had to find McCoy and get the Enterprise back, then he could deal with whatever was bothering Spock. He set his jaw in a firm line and made the only decision he could. 

~*~*~*~

“I do not understand,” Spock said.

“They’re gone,” Al expanded, his voice growing louder with each word. “Vanished, vamoosed.”

Spock stared stonily at him, the rising concern and the controls he had to bring into play making his face even more stern than usual. “Gone? Gone where?”

Al threw his hands up. “We don’t know. One minute there he was zipping around in space, smooth as you like, the next, Alakazam. Gone. Like when he leaps, except you’re still here.” 

The last words came out almost accusingly and Spock raised his eyebrow. “May I remind you, Admiral Calavicci,” he said grimly, “that I am not here by choice. If anything untoward has occurred, it is the fault of your project.” He folded his arms across his chest. “If any harm has befallen my captain, I will hold you responsible.”

Al noted the menacing look. It didn’t look emotionless to him, whatever Spock claimed about his species. “Look,” he said, “I know you’re worried about your friend. I’m worried about mine too, so how about you stop giving me the evils, play nice and help us find them?”

Spock’s eyes narrowed, but he had to concede the logic of the suggestion, despite the terms it was couched in. “Admiral Calavicci,” he noted. “Were the odds against it not astronomically high. I would wager you were related to a medical man of my acquaintance.”

Al rolled his eyes. “Are you gonna help or not?” he demanded impatiently.

“I will help in any way I can without risking damage to the integrity of the time line,” Spock offered. 

In truth he would likely risk that and a lot more to ensure the safety of his captain, but he was not about to admit that to anybody, let alone a near stranger with little emotional control, a curious interpretation of the English language and an extremely dubious dress sense who was to all intents and purposes holding him hostage.

 

~*~*~*~

 

The sensation of passing through the Guardian of Forever was not unlike that of Quantum Leaping, Sam discovered. There was a feeling of being in freefall, a breathless rushing of noise, and then a sudden bump of awareness on landing in a completely unfamiliar place. As his vision cleared, Sam turned to check on his companion.

Jim Kirk was looking around in wide-eyed amazement. Sam followed his gaze, taking in the antique vehicles, the peeling posters pasted onto shabby looking buildings, the strange clothing worn by passers-by. If it was weird for him, what must it be like for Kirk, he wondered. Most of the things Sam saw when he leaped into the past were from within his own lifetime, so were at least partially familiar to him. Even this place, although from the looks of it a decade or so before his birth, was not too outside of his experience, but for the captain…

“I’ve seen old photographs of this time period,” Kirk said, looking around in wonderment. He hadn’t for a moment for forgotten their mission, but that didn’t mean that just being in this place wasn’t amazing to him. Not many people knew of his longstanding interest in history and he supposed it wasn’t that common a pursuit for Starship captains, but where his passion for fiction offered an escape from the day to day pressures of running a ship, so his love of history was what kept him grounded. It was important, he passionately believed, to be familiar with the mistakes of the past in order to be able to avoid the same mistakes in the future. In his opinion, StarFleet should make history a compulsory study area for all command candidates. 

He took in the clues around them, trying to work out where they’d landed. “An economic upheaval had occurred,” he said slowly as he noted the dilapidated, neglected look of the area, the darned clothing and worried expressions on tired faces. Nothing spoke of prosperity.

“It was called depression,” Sam offered, searching his brain for something useful to offer. “Circa 1930,” he came up with, then spotted the strange looks the pair of them were attracting. He raised his hand to cover one ear as he tilted his head to one side to hide the other. Two middle-aged women stopped to openly, and rather rudely, stare at them, clutching their shopping bags hungrily to their bellies as if they feared someone might swoop in at any moment and snatch their precious supplies.

The two men slunk up to a wall and tried to look inconspicuous. It wasn’t easy. The bright blue and gold of their uniforms couldn’t help but stand out in a place where drab browns and greys appeared to the order of the day. 

“We seem to be costumed a little out of step with the time,” Kirk commented.

Sam felt one of his eyebrows rise without any conscious effort on his part, almost as if it were acting out an echo of a long-established gesture. “I’m afraid I’m going to be difficult to explain in any case, Captain,” he said.

Kirk turned to him and, for the first time since Sam had met the man, a look that wasn’t worry, or closely related to worry, found its way onto his face as he reached out to touch his companion’s arm. 

“Well, Mr Spock,” the captain said, fondness and humour tingeing the tone of his voice as he almost caressed Sam’s arm, “if we can’t disguise you, we’ll have to find a way of explaining you.”

Sam felt the eyebrow rising again, at the tone of his voice and the nature of his touch as much as at the words themselves. “That should prove interesting,” he said in all sincerity.

Kirk grinned at his friend. Despite the reason they were here, he felt somehow lighter, almost giddy with an unexpected sense of excitement at being on Earth, however different the planet might be to the one he remembered. It was probably just the adrenaline spiking through his system creating an artificial high, but he felt free and unfettered. He also felt rather conspicuous, as yet another pair of pedestrians slowed to stare at them as they passed by. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to his companion and set off across the street, trusting that Spock would follow, as he always did.

 

~*~*~*~

 

Sam watched as Kirk ran over to a rickety fire escape winding its way up the side of an apartment building. The captain quickly made his way to the top of the ladder and reached up to the clothes someone had draped over it to dry in the day’s cool air. Sam frowned to himself. He appreciated the necessity of being less noticeable than they were at the moment, but stealing wasn’t something he felt natural being a party to.

“Goody two-shoes,” a voice whispered close to his ear and Sam jumped. When would he ever get used to that?

“Al,” he hissed. “Please tell me you know why we’re here.” He turned to fix a pleading gaze on the hologram, who was now clad in a turquoise zoot suit, with the requisite matching hat perched on his head. Sam paused for a moment as he took in the outfit, then shook his head long-sufferingly when Al spread his arms to better show it off. 

“Al,” Sam repeated, the warning tone indicating that if his friend were in flesh and blood form then a sharp slap might be winging its way towards him if an answer wasn’t forthcoming pretty soon.

“Do you know,” Al glared at him, “how hard it was to find you? Just as we got you pinpointed off you go on a jaunt through time. Again. Although,” he added as he looked disapprovingly around him, “you really coulda picked a better vacation spot.”

Sam opened his mouth to once again demand answers, then closed it as Kirk ran up to him clutching an armful of stolen clothing, the pink flush on his cheeks giving him the look of a mischievous schoolboy. 

“I think I’m going to like this century,” the captain offered. “Simple, easier to manage. We’re not going to have any difficulty explaining…”

He broke off as a man in a dark-coloured uniform stepped in front of them, clearing his throat as he raised his eyebrows in the direction of the bundle in Kirk’s hands.

“Uh oh,” Al muttered from behind them, and Sam resisted the instinct to turn in the direction of his friend’s voice, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the scene playing out in front of him. 

“You’re a police officer,” Kirk said nervously, drawing on his knowledge of the era. “I recognise the traditional, ah, accoutrements.” 

The policeman’s frown deepened and Kirk gulped. Accoutrements? Accoutrements? Where the hell had that come from? He tried one of his range of charming smiles instead. They had to get out of this somehow or another. They weren’t going to be able to do anyone any good if they were languishing in jail on a charge of petty theft. The officer’s gaze shifted to his companion and Kirk’s heart sank, the buoyancy of a few minutes earlier had faded very quickly.

“You were saying you’d have no difficulty explaining,” Sam offered and Kirk grimaced.

“Uh my friend is obviously Chinese,” he started and almost groaned out loud as the words left his lips. What was wrong with him? Spock no more looked Chinese than he looked like Kirk’s Great Aunt Millicent. He glanced over to see two delicate eyebrows climbing in unison towards the neat bangs that fell in a perfectly straight line across his friend’s forehead. Kirk felt himself break out in a sweat as he shifted nervously on his feet. 

“Ah, I see you’ve noticed the, um, ears,” he stalled, snatching another, this time almost desperate, look at the man next to him.

Sam groped for something to say to help Kirk out but found his mind had gone inconveniently blank.

“The accident you had as a child,” hissed the voice from behind him.

“What?” came out of Sam’s lips before he could stop it and three sets of eyes were suddenly focussed on him alone. “The accident I had as a child,” he blurted.

“Yes, um. He caught his head in a mechanical…rice-picker,” Kirk came up with.

Al burst into startled laughter and Sam had to clamp his own mouth shut as a wave of hysteria threatened to rise. He folded his hands behind his back and fixed his eyes on a point in front of him. If he met Al’s eyes he’d never manage to keep a lid on it and he was fairly sure gales of laughter were included in the emotions Vulcans weren’t supposed to show. 

Kirk tried in vain to dig himself out of the pit he was floundering in with some increasingly desperate mutterings about an American plastic surgeon who happened to come across the Chinese Spock trapped in a vicious automated rice-picker and had ineptly fixed his ears into points. 

“All right, that’s enough!” the policeman’s patience finally gave way. “Drop the clothes and up against that wall,” he ordered, pointing at a nearby building. 

Sam moved to face the wall and put his hands up against it as ordered. Kirk dropped the bundle of clothing and adopted the same position next to him and the officer began to pat them down.

Al gave a lecherous smirk as he approximated the same position on Sam’s other side. “I think he likes you,” he said, waggling his eyebrows up and down suggestively as he planted a cigar between his teeth.

Sam glared at him and bit down on the retort he wanted to make as Kirk turned slightly towards the police officer. “Oh, how careless of your wife to let you go out like that,” he said, somewhat incongruously. Sam turned away from Al and threw a confused glance in Kirk’s direction.

The captain stared meaningfully at his first officer, then looked pointedly once again at the policeman’s shoulder. “How untidy,” he said loudly.

Sam stared at him in total incomprehension. What was he on about? Did he have nothing better to worry about while they were in the process of getting arrested than the state of the uniform being worn by the cop doing the deed?

“Untidy..” Kirk tried again, then slumped as it became obvious Spock was completely missing what he was getting at and had no intention of nerve-pinching this guy, either now or any time in the near future. Another wave of unease passed through him as he frantically racked his brain for an alternative escape tactic. 

“Look out!” he yelled at the top of his voice, throwing a suddenly terrified look at a point just behind the man’s shoulder. It might be the oldest trick in the book but desperate times call for desperate measures and luck was on their side; The cop fell for it. Kirk was on him in a second. A quick right hook and the man was groaning on the ground. The captain scooped up the clothes. 

“Run for it!” he yelled as he took off.

Sam threw Al a quick look and the hologram smiled, raised his eyebrows and opened the door to the future. Sam took half a step towards him then gritted his teeth, shook his head in exasperation and turned to run after the captain before the cop could get to his feet.

 

~*~*~*~

Kirk ran through an unsecured doorway into the basement of a building, Sam hot on his heels. The room was obviously used for storage. It was stuffed full of random bits of furniture and boxes, all laced with cobwebs and several inches of dust. Kirk strode over and dumped the bundle of clothes on a table, immediately beginning to rifle through them. 

He turned as his companion moved to stand beside him, throwing him a sideways look. The moment with the cop had left him feeling more than a little shaken. Spock was his first officer - the best first officer in the ’Fleet - but he was also Kirk’s closest friend. Their relationship was far more than that of captain and second in command, it was almost symbiotic. He could count on Spock to know what he had in mind and to react without needing it to be spelled out, or at least he’d thought he could. 

Just yesterday he would’ve bet all the credits he had that Spock would have immediately responded to his unspoken suggestion of a nerve-pinch back there, but he hadn’t and it wasn’t the first time since this whole mess had started. More than that, he’d not even shown the slightest indication that he had any idea Kirk was trying to communicate with him at all. But what was he supposed to say about it? ‘Hey first officer, why didn’t you read my mind when I needed you to?’.

Kirk snorted and garnered himself a startled look. He met a pair of puzzled brown eyes and realised he might not be about to accuse his first officer of failing to read obscure eye signals, but he’d better say something. 

“You were actually enjoying my predicament back there,” he settled on.

Sam remained silent, not sure what the right response might be in these circumstances.

Kirk held a plaid shirt in his hand and looked at it thoughtfully, as if it might somehow miraculously hold the answers to his questions within its innocuous stripes. 

“At times,” he added, “you seem quite Human.”

Sam started slightly. The look thrown at him from through lowered eyelashes was almost flirtatious and definitely teasing. His mind raced to grasp at the right response but he didn’t know how to react to a tone that seemed so intimate, very much between Kirk and Spock and nothing he could begin to deal with.

Kirk’s grin faded as Spock froze rather than responding to his words. It was as if his friend had taken the words at their literal meaning instead of an invitation to resume their usual friendly, sometimes even flirty, banter, an attempt to lighten the situation they found themselves in. He handed over a shirt and pair of pants without another word. 

Sam knew by the captain’s expression that he had once again got something wrong, missed some subtle nuance in Spock’s behaviour. He groaned inwardly as he toed off the long black boots he was wearing. God, this leap was tough. It was bad enough having to pass himself off as a cop or a singer, a magician or a mother, but at least with those he had some frame of reference. He’d at least watched cop shows on TV, he’d sung plenty of songs, watched a few magic shows, he’d had a mom. Somewhere, sometime, he still had a mom. But this was another matter entirely. How did you pass yourself off as a member of a whole other species? How could you ever hope to assimilate what it meant to be alien, with the cultural, psychological, physical differences that had to entail?

The unmistakable sound of a quantum doorway being opened jolted him out of his thoughts and he turned to see Al step through. The hologram gestured to him to move across to another part of the basement. Sam looked over at Kirk, who was pulling his gold uniform shirt over his head. 

“I’ll just get changed over there, Captain,” he said hurriedly, starting to move before he’d finished the end of the sentence.

Kirk heard the words through the fabric over his head and was distracted enough that he was momentarily caught between completing the movement he’d started and pulling the shirt back down. The tiny pause was enough that by the time he pulled the shirt off and freed himself from its confinement, all he saw was the back of his first officer disappearing behind a great pile of boxes in the far corner of the room. He gazed after him, wondering where the sudden attack of modesty had come from. He frowned as he shrugged into the stolen shirt.

Sam ducked behind the wall of boxes and found Al there waiting for him. 

“What’ve you got, Al?” he whispered urgently, desperate for something, anything, that could make some sense out of the situation he found himself in.

Al jabbed at the terminal in his hand, grimacing around his cigar and slapping the interface hard, as it once again failed to immediately offer up the information requested of it. The recalcitrant machine gave an indignant-sounding beep, and Al slapped it again.

“Al,” Sam hissed as loudly as he dared.

The hologram plucked the cigar from his mouth and waved it in Sam’s direction. 

“Hang on,” he said. “One minute.” He jabbed his fingers at the terminal. “Come on,” he said, then muttered something incomprehensible under his breath.

“Aha,” he finally announced, rather too loudly for Sam’s liking. 

Despite the fact that no one could hear the hologram but him, Sam still found it disconcerting when Al didn’t keep his voice down in situations such as these. 

“Shhhh,” he hissed.

“Aha,” Al repeated more quietly, throwing him a look of fond tolerance. “Gotcha.” 

He looked up at Sam and grinned as if he’d just seen him standing there. “Shame,” he said looking him up and down, “I kinda liked the uniform. It suited your ears.”

Sam glared at him. “Al, come on,” he hissed. “What’s Ziggy come up with?”

Al stuck his tongue out at him. “All right,” he said confidently. “The date is November 5, 1930. You’re in the 21st Street Mission, run by Edith,” he broke off as the interface terminal let out a pained sounding squawk and bashed it on the side of a nearby crate. “Keeler,” he finished. Then stopped talking. 

Sam stared at him. “That’s it?!” he exclaimed. “That’s all you’ve managed to come up with.”

Al prodded his fedora into a slightly jauntier angle and frowned. “What do you mean is that it?!” he exclaimed. “Do you even appreciate how much work went into getting that much?!” Sam stared at him and Al sighed theatrically. 

“Look, Sam,” he continued with exaggerated patience, “what you’ve gotta understand is we’re even more in the dark here than we usually are in this cockamamie project of yours,” he broke off to fix Sam with a glare that spoke a million words when it came to exactly whose fault the whole lost in time thing might be. He stuck his cigar back in his mouth and started pacing up and down, waving his hands in the air for emphasis as he spoke. 

“Ziggy is programmed with historical data from your lifetime, right?” he asked, as if addressing a rather slow on the uptake child, “and cross-references history to major events specific to the lives of those close to the person you jumped into in order to project the odds on what you’re supposed to do, yes?” He paused and stared pointedly at Sam, obviously expecting some response. 

Sam nodded, trying not to let his frustration show as his heart sank. It didn’t take a quantum physics genius with five doctorates to figure out where this conversation was going.

“But this time,” Al continued, “you’ve not only jumped into someone who hasn’t been born yet and won’t be for, ooh, three hundred years, give or take a decade or two, but you’ve then shot back in time to the 1930s, way before you were born. Jesus, way before even I was born!” He raised his eyebrows as he stared at Sam. “You see the problem?” he finished, his tone dripping with frustration and not very well concealed sarcasm.

Sam let out a sigh and sat heavily on a discarded chair. “Ziggy’s circuits are fried?” he offered, thinking the supercomputer with a superego to match that he’d designed to run the Quantum Leap project was likely to be even more royally pissed off than usual at this particular mess.

“Fried?!” Al echoed. “I’d say they’re pretty much magnafoogled to hell and back at this point.”

“Spock?” came a concerned voice from the other side of the room and Al gestured towards it with his cigar. 

“Duty calls,” the hologram grinned and Sam sighed and got up from the chair. 

“Oh, there was one other thing,” Al began, and Sam threw him a look of exasperation as he got up from the chair. He gestured to his friend to follow him as he walked around the wall of dusty crates, back to where Kirk was looking at him with a curious expression on his face.

“The good news is,” Al was saying as Sam stopped next to the captain. “Spock reckons you’ve got at least a week to go before the doc gets here.”

“A week?!” Sam exclaimed before he could stop himself, and Kirk frowned in confusion. He cleared his throat. 

“I believe we have at least a week before McCoy arrives, Captain,” he explained in a more measured tone.

Kirk looked at his first officer, the news completely taking his mind away from Spock’s odd behaviour. Something had been playing on his mind while his friend had been hiding out behind those boxes. 

“But where?” he voiced his fear. “Honolulu, Boise, San Diego? Why not Outer Mongolia for that matter?”

Sam’s mind was trying to tell him something. The answer was there somewhere in his brain, he knew it. If he could just reach for it. 

“There is a theory…” he began slowly, and desperately met Al’s eye. The hologram immediately started tapping at the terminal in his hand as Kirk watched Sam expectantly.

“…that time is fluid like a river,” Al began and Sam repeated the words as the image of his friend spoke them with a voice only he could hear, “with currents, eddies, backwash.” 

As he spoke the words the theory made perfect sense and it was like a light going on in his brain. He had to resist the urge to break into a huge grin. Temporal physics always did that to him. 

Al smiled for him as he opened the door back to the future.

Kirk looked at his first officer in dawning understanding. “And the same currents that swept McCoy to a certain time and place might sweep us there too?”

Sam nodded, momentarily surprised the captain had grasped his meaning so quickly. He felt an added sense of respect for this man into whose friendship he had been thrust so suddenly. Kirk was undoubtedly intelligent as well as intuitive and caring. Sam hadn’t missed the concerned looks he’d been on the receiving end of since he leaped into Spock’s place. He’d always been surprised at how little the nearest and dearest of those he leaped into often seemed to worry about the changes in behaviour he couldn’t do much about, but Kirk was one of those who was especially sensitive. 

He wondered just how close he and Spock were that Kirk noticed so much about his second in command. He shook his head at the direction his thoughts were taking. It was probably just that he was even worse at pretending to be an alien than he was at pretending to be a woman. He sighed as Kirk turned to explore the rest of the basement. At least here he wouldn’t have to try to walk in heels, not unless he’d really misread Spock.

 

~*~*~*~

 

Kirk halted in his exploration of the basement and stared in the direction the noise had come from. At the top of the stairs a door was slowly opening.

“Who’s there?” a woman’s voice called out, the tone one of accusation mixed with the tightness of fear.

Kirk moved to the foot of the stairs as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Spock quickly move across to the table where he’d left a hat the captain had managed to include with the bundle of stolen clothes. Disguise, he’d decided after the encounter with the police officer, was definitely a more practical option than explanation.

He looked up the stairs to see a woman with dark hair styled in the fashion of the times, drawn back from her face in a simple chignon. She wore an apron over the top of a beige dress, a gold-coloured locket around her neck. Her clothes were plain, her expression as she frowned down the stairs, tense and accusatory, as well it might be having happened upon intruders in her basement. 

Kirk tried to look as innocent as he could as he moved out of the shadows and smiled up at her. “It was cold outside,” he offered in explanation.

The woman’s expression hardened as she regarded him. “A lie is a poor way to say hello,” she replied, folding her arms across her chest, obviously unmoved by his attempt to charm. “It’s not that cold.”

Kirk swallowed as he stared up at her. There was something about her. She was beautiful, certainly, but that wasn’t it. She wasn’t his usual type either, she was dark and her gaze intense whereas he tended to go for fluffy, lightweight and always, always, temporary. However, as he looked at her he found he was unable to tear his eyes away from hers. They demanded the truth.

“These clothes,” he said, feeling Spock move up to stand next to him as he spoke. “We stole them.”

She met his eyes for a moment then looked down at where her hand rested on the banister running along the wall next to the rickety old stairs. She looked up again, and Kirk could see a decision in her eyes, one that maybe she was unsure if she’d regret. 

“I could do with some help around here,” she said, holding up her fingertips to show the dust from the stair rail that now clung to them. Kirk smiled at her. He intended to make sure she didn’t regret holding out a hand to help couple of strangers when they most needed it.

Sam watched the exchange with interest. He could see the connection between the pair of them, the interest each obviously had in the other. Was that linked to why he was here? It wouldn’t be the first time the purpose of his leap had been to bring two people together. In fact, it was a more regular occurrence than you might think it would be. It seemed like whoever or whatever was leaping him through time was pretty soft-hearted. 

He resisted the urge to sigh; the course of true love might never run smoothly, but make way for Dr Sam Beckett and all would be well, except of course that he couldn’t ever stay anywhere long enough to meet a love of his own, and his own best friend was flitting from wife to wife in the vain hope of ever getting over the one true love he’d left behind and lost when he went off to fight in Vietnam. 

Sam looked on as Kirk talked with the woman who’d introduced herself as Edith Keeler who, as Al had said, ran the 21st Street Mission housed in this building. He might not be able to make things right for himself or for Al, but he’d do everything he could for these two, the trouble was, how could this possibly work out? 

 

~*~*~*~

 

Kirk lay on one of twin beds in the small room and stared up at the ceiling. They’d been here nearly a week already and there was still no sign of McCoy. In that time Edith Keeler had been a lifeline. She’d not only provided them with work at the mission but, impressed by the military ‘spit and polish’ with which they’d tackled the basement room where she’d found them on that first day, she’d also directed them to an available ‘flop’, or place to stay, in the apartment building where she lived.

He turned on his side and rested his cheek on his upturned palm as he gazed across to the other bed in the room, which Spock had taken over with the wires and circuits he had been painstakingly putting together ever since their arrival in the 1930s. His first officer had been single-minded about it, as he always was about any challenge put before him. His attempts to find out why they were here and where McCoy might be had taken up every moment of his spare time around the work they were doing at the shelter. Kirk had missed him. He was used to spending a large part of his free time with Spock, but what he was doing was specialised. It wasn’t something Kirk could claim any expertise in and so he’d decided that the best way he could help was by staying out of the way and by picking up whatever jobs he could to pay for supplies. 

It had been exquisite torture. Sharing this room, this bed, with Spock yet paradoxically finding a distance growing between them that hadn’t been there before. He’d accepted his feelings for his first officer weren’t ever going to be reciprocated and he was used to pushing them to one side, concentrating instead on the close friendship they had. But here even that precious intimacy seemed remote and the more Spock drew away the more he wanted him. He sighed. Then there was Edith. 

“I find her most uncommon,” was what he’d told Spock not long after they‘d met, and it was true but it wasn’t the whole truth. The whole truth was something he had to keep from his friend, and it felt like it was slowly eating him up from the inside out.

Edith reminded him of Spock. Her confident self-assuredness, her determination to always do what was right, what was logical and needed to be done. Even the way she looked, the steady, warm, brown-eyed gaze she fixed him with, reminded him of Spock. He’d found himself spending more and more time with her while the Vulcan was occupied with his circuits and the more time he spent with her the more he was drawn to her, the more he admired and liked her. 

He knew he was doing what he had promised himself he never would, falling for someone who reminded him of the lover who could never be, and worse than that he was once again reaching out for the unreachable. 

He had an idea she was falling in love with him, thought he might even be falling in love with her, but anything that grew between them was just as doomed as any chance of a relationship with his first officer. So what the hell was he supposed to do?

He shifted restlessly onto his back once again and returned his gaze to the ceiling. It was all such a mess and, whichever way he looked, he couldn’t see how it could turn out to be anything other than disastrous. He squeezed his eyes momentarily shut and took a deep breath. 

Through all that was happening, there was the fear for McCoy, that other closest of friends. And there’d been nothing, not hint of where he might be, what was happening to him. He was lost here in a world that was as alien as it was familiar, in a time that was unforgiving and fraught with danger even to those who were in their right minds. Not for the first time the thought flicked across his mind that perhaps McCoy was dead. He grabbed that notion and forcibly ejected it from his brain. It couldn’t be. He would find him and he would take him home. That was what a friend did, more than that, it was what a captain did.

He looked up as the door opened and his first officer walked into the room, clutching his latest haul of wires and metals. 

Sam stopped as he spotted Kirk lying on the bunk they’d been sharing out of necessity - finances being rather limited and space even more so - since they got here. The captain was staring up at the ceiling. He looked a million miles away, his eyes focussed on something not in the room. As Sam stared, Kirk jumped to his feet and grinned, once again the commander at ease, and the moment was broken.

Sam put the paper bag full of second hand electrical equipment on the table and took off the woolly hat that had served its purpose well in hiding the most obvious of Spock’s physical differences. He’d probably need the warmth of it even if there was no other reason to keep it on at all times he was outside. The weather was cold, the crispness of the air holding the promise of snow any time now. 

He started pulling his gloves off finger by finger as he looked questioningly at Kirk. “Do you have any plans for the evening, Captain?” he asked politely. 

Kirk grabbed his jacket from where he’d slung it over the back of a chair. “I’ll get out of your way,” he said as he headed towards the door. “Edith was talking about a new movie she wants to see. Clark Gable?”

Sam nodded and Kirk threw him a puzzled look before he swung out of the room. He’d had no idea who Clark Gable was when Edith mentioned it, and he had even less of an idea why Spock - who as far as he knew had never even watched an old-style Earth movie - should look as though the name was perfectly familiar to him.

Sam looked at the closed door for a moment before sitting at the table that served to hold those bits of circuitry not taking up the bed. In the time they’d been here he’d adopted a tone of polite distance more often than not when he talked to the captain. Kirk had made it obvious they were friends outside of their roles as commander and first officer, but the material he’d read on Vulcans suggested a certain reserve was still necessary in their interactions. However, being constantly aware of showing as little emotion as possible was wearing on his nerves and Kirk seemed perversely bewildered by it. 

Sam was attempting to build a computer aid far in advance of what 1930s technology had to offer in order to analyse the historical data from the Guardian recorded by the tricorder. If he succeeded they should be able to pinpoint exactly what it was McCoy had changed here that had such far reaching effects on the future. Without access to a computer the task was proving to be problematic to say the least.

Kirk, thankfully, was spending more and more time with Edith Keeler, which in turn gave Sam more time to work without worrying about being overheard talking to no one. Al hadn’t been much help in terms of whether or not the mission had anything to do with Kirk and Edith or if it should be focussed solely on finding McCoy, or both or neither. Spock was apparently not the most talkative of residents they’d ever had in the waiting room when it came to personal matters but, at least, he had proved invaluable in putting together the device that Sam hoped was nearly ready to access at least some of the information that might help them. His own genius had been temporarily somewhat muted by the impact time travel had on his memory, but the information Spock was relaying through Al was nothing less than brilliant, despite the difficulties in having to apply it third hand.

He made what seemed like the millionth slight adjustment and drew in a sharp breath as the screen in front of him flickered at long last to life.

Surprisingly after all the work it had taken to get this far, it took only minutes to find what he was looking for. He focussed in on the first newspaper article and then the second, contradictory, one, hardly even registering the sound of the quantum door opening behind him or the for once silent presence at his shoulder.

 

~*~*~*~

“Why does Spock call you Captain?” Edith Keeler asked as she and Kirk strolled along the sidewalk, the strains of an old-fashioned tune coming from an open window, the singer softly crooning his sweetheart to sleep.

The pleasing music was soothing and Kirk smiled at Edith as he pondered how best to answer the question. It was typical of her, he’d come to realise in the short time he’d known her, to pick on exactly the question that was needed to get to the heart of any matter.

“Were you in the war?” she prodded while he was still thinking.

“We…served together,” he answered, as truthfully as he could.

“But you don’t like to talk about it?” 

Kirk remained silent, concentrating on the soft noise of their feet hitting the paving as they walked along.

“Did you do something wrong?” She pressed, and he smiled as he shook his head. She was nothing if not persistent this new friend of his, and far from being annoying, as it might be in some, her questions simply had the ring of someone who yearned to understand everything and everyone as best as she could. He thought again how much she reminded him of Spock. How pathetic, that he could spend so much time yearning after someone who was never going to return his affections then find someone else whom he might just be able to love, only for her to exist three hundred years before he would even be born. It would be funny if it weren’t so damn painful.

He stopped and turned towards her, determined to change the subject. “Why this sudden interest in Spock?” he asked and reached out to hold her shoulders, lowering his head towards hers for a kiss. 

She placed a hand in the centre of his chest and gently pushing him away as she stepped backwards, away from him. He frowned in confusion. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Edith sighed. “I’m not sure,” she said, looking searchingly at him. “This doesn’t seem right somehow.” She paused for a long while as if the right words were hard to find. “You don’t belong here,” she said finally, “you seem so out of place.”

Kirk felt a shiver pass over him as her insightful eyes seemed to see right through him. He tried to laugh it off. “Where would you say I belong?”

They began to walk along again and Edith threw him a sidelong glance. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “In another place. I don’t know where, or how.”

Kirk shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his pants, disconcerted by the way the conversation was going.

“I’ll figure it out,” Edith told him. “Just give me time.”

Kirk wasn’t sure why, but he believed she would. “And Spock?” he had to ask, the Vulcan never far from his thoughts.

Beside him Edith slowed again. “At your side,” she said immediately, no need to search for the words this time, “as if he’s always been there and always will be.”

Kirk stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at her. Had she guessed somehow? He didn’t want her to think she was some sort of substitute. She was worth more than that. He gulped. “I..” 

She reached to touch his arm. “Let me help,” she said softly, her eyes full of a compassionate understanding.

Kirk looked over and met the concerned brown eyes. “Let me help,” he said, wistfulness tingeing his voice. “A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He’ll recommend those three words even over ‘I love you’.” 

Edith frowned, then laughed as she gave a slight shake of her head. “A hundred years from now,” she questioned, then let the words tail off as though she wasn’t sure she wanted to carry on the conversation.

The trouble was, Kirk thought as they carried on walking, he wasn’t sure anyone could help him now. 

 

~*~*~*~

Sam jumped out of his seat, what he’d seen on the screen still sinking in.

“I’m here to save her,” he blurted out, hoping that if he said the words with enough certainty then they’d be the ones that were true. 

Al met his eyes. “Or you’re here to make sure she dies,” he said gently.

“No!” Sam let out. “That can’t be it. How can that possibly be putting right what once went wrong? It makes a mockery of, of…everything. Every reason we’ve come up with for why I’m going through this, every reason for why I can’t go home!” 

He smacked his clenched fist on the table, barely registering the shockwave of pain that shot up the sinews and muscles of his arm. He met Al’s eyes. “If I’m here to let someone die, then what’s the point of any of this?”

Al swallowed hard as he stared back at him.

“Why am I here, Al?” Sam asked once again, all the fight gone out of his body as he slumped back into the chair.

Al let out a noise of frustration. “I don’t know!” he said, jabbing his cigar in the air for emphasis. “I know what you know. Edith Keeler either lives to become an emissary of peace or she dies this year, in the here and now. One of those outcomes will change all of history. Millions of people will live or die depending on whether she lives or dies, depending on what you do.”

“But that’s not good enough,” Sam shouted back. “How do I know which one? I can’t just take a guess at this, Al. It’s a person’s life at stake, more than a person’s life. I need to know. I need to know what I’m supposed to do and I need to know what the hell I can do here that Spock can’t or didn’t or won’t.” He flung his hand towards the tricorder. “I don’t even know how to fix this, let alone these people’s lives.”

He slumped further down in his seat and allowed his head to rest on the table in front of him. “I have to know, Al,” he muttered. 

He never saw Al reach out a hand towards him, or the pain on his friend’s face. 

“I’ll be right back, Sam, all right?” Al said, “Just hang on in there, kid. Just hang on in there.”

 

~*~*~*~

 

Al stepped out of the imaging chamber and strode across the waiting room to where Spock watched him impassively, hands folded behind his back in a posture that had become all too familiar to Al in the time since the Vulcan had arrived. 

“Now look here, Elf Boy,” he shouted. “I’ve had enough of the playing it cool treatment. I don’t care about ‘StarFleet protocols’ or ‘not interfering in the timeline’, or anything the hell else you wanna come up with. I need your help with more than just how to put a pile of wires together. My friend is in trouble and so is yours and I can’t do this alone!” His voice broke on the last word but Al found he was past caring.

There was the sound of a throat clearing from across the room and he glanced over to his right to see Gooshi, standing there in his lab coat, looking rather disgruntled, whether at the shouting in the lab or the inference that his help wasn’t up to much, Al wasn’t sure. He stared at him for a moment then shook his head and turned his attention back to Spock. Gooshi’s ego could wait. Spock was staring at him with Sam’s face, his expression showing the most emotion Al had seen since the Vulcan’s arrival.

“The captain is in trouble?” He couldn’t keep the concern from showing in his voice, either, Al noted.

He thumped his hand down on the counter behind which Spock stood. “He’s in trouble, Sam’s in trouble, the whole world is going to be in the deepest pile of caca it’s ever been in if we don’t think of something soon and you need to help me figure out exactly why Sam is there.”

Spock’s eyebrows rose. “caca?” he questioned.

“Caca,” Al repeated.

“Perhaps you had better explain the latest developments in the situation, Admiral Calavicci,” Spock offered, his tone as calm and precise as ever.

 

~*~*~*~

 

Sam stared at the floor as he watched Kirk’s face light up in amazement.

The smell of burned out circuits was lingering in the air but Sam barely noticed it. He didn’t want to be the one to destroy this man’s world but he’d only shown him one of the possible futures before the fragile circuit had blown again, this time causing even more damage than before. If there was any hope he could have fixed it enough to figure out which of the futures he’d seen for Edith was true, than it was gone now. It was simply too difficult a job for someone with a Swiss-cheesed brain in this place and this time. Harder still was having to tell Kirk the rest of it.

“The president…and Edith Keeler,” Kirk said, his mind full of the 1936 newspaper article he’d seen on the tricorder’s screen. ‘FDR confers with slum area angel’. 

“It might not happen, Jim,” Sam cut in, saying the words quickly before he stopped himself saying them at all. “Before you came back, I read a 1930 article.”

Kirk felt his heart thudding so loudly he was sure it must be audible to Vulcan ears. He squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to hear what that other article said, to know why his best friend had that stricken expression on his face. 

“We know her future,” he cut in, “within six years from now, she’ll become very important, nationally famous.”

Sam took a deep breath. “Or,” he forced himself to interrupt, “Edith Keeler will die. This year. I saw her obituary, some sort of traffic accident.”

Kirk stared at the man standing opposite him, searching his face, waiting for him to come up with some other option, but there was only silence.

“You must be mistaken,” he said, clutching at straws. “They both can’t be true.” 

Even as he said it, he knew that they could. Just like it could be true that he and his half Human, half Vulcan first officer could be here on Earth in the 20th century, hundreds of years before either of them would be born.

It could be true, he just didn’t want it to be.

“Captain, Edith Keeler is the focal point we’ve been searching for.” Sam moved over to sit on the bed they’d been using to sleep in. “She’s the key to all of this.”

Kirk stared at his first officer, a sick feeling rising inside him as he realised the import of those words. 

“She has two possible futures, then,” he said miserably, “and depending on whether she lives or dies all of history will be changed.” He paused. “And McCoy?”

“Is the random factor,” Sam finished the thought.

“In his condition what does he do? Does he kill her?” Kirk couldn’t believe his friend capable of such an act, whatever his condition. No one held the sanctity of life in a higher regard than McCoy. ‘First do no harm’ - to McCoy it was more than an oath, it was at the very centre of the person he was.

“We don’t know that,” Sam told him, fervently hoping it was true. “He might save her from being killed.”

Kirk turned his back, struggling to keep his emotions under control. “Get this thing fixed,” he said. “We have to find out before McCoy arrives.”

He moved towards the door and reached out to turn the old-fashioned handle. “I must know whether she lives or dies, Spock,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I need to know what to do.” 

Sam stared after him as he walked out of the room then slowly sank down to sit on the bed again, those last words running through his head. He buried his face in his hands for a moment then pushed his hands up to run them through his hair. 

“You need to know,” he repeated to himself. “I need to know,” he groaned and tipped his head back. 

“Al,” he pleaded to the empty room. “I need to know what I’m supposed to do.”

As if on cue a door appeared and opened to let Al step through, attired in his pristine white admiral’s dress uniform, the one he wore when things were getting serious, when he really meant business. 

“Spock has an idea,” the hologram announced without so much as a hello.

Sam leant forward in his chair. “What?” he said, a bubble of hope rising inside him.

“Now don’t get your hopes up, Sam,” he warned. “It sounds completely loony tunes to me.”

Five minutes after Al finished speaking, Sam was still spluttering out disbelieving questions.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “Spock has the power to link his mind to yours so you can both be here as holograms to help me figure this out?”

Al nodded, his expression unreadable.

“And you’re ok with this?” Sam said wonderingly.

“Spock thinks it’s the only way to get it fixed quickly,” the hologram said, avoiding the question.

Sam jumped to his feet, his mind sifting through the information Al had just given him. Sam could see the projection of Al sent by the Imaging Chamber back home when no one else could because the projection was tuned into his brainwaves. 

If Spock were to create a temporary link between himself and Al in the waiting room, his brainwaves could be ‘piggybacked’ onto Al’s, without the need for extensive adjustments to the parameters of the imaging chamber. In theory Al and Spock could both tune into him and both be there to help him. In theory.

Sam frowned. “Is he sure it’s safe?” he questioned, anxiety bubbling inside him. The idea of it was so extraordinary, so completely outside their Human understanding.

Al nodded. The only drawback to the plan, according to Spock, was that his mind might reach out to the space where it was supposed to be, to where Sam currently was. There was a risk of their thoughts and personalities beginning to merge. But the risk was apparently less than 8.34 per cent and one Spock was confident he could prevent. 

“I can’t pretend I like the idea of anyone fiddling around inside my mind,“ Al finished outlining what Spock had said and waggled his eyebrows up and down, “and Spock may be in for a shock but, you know me - I’ll try anything once. Or three times.”

“Al,” Sam said warningly. He knew his friend was trying to make light of something that clearly scared the living hell out of him.

Al gave a wan smile. “Sam, I haven’t known Spock for long and he’s as irritating as hell, but I do think we can trust him. He says he can do it and I believe him. Besides,” he shrugged, “it may be the only way we can figure out what’s happening - or going to happen,” he frowned at the difficulties of temporal grammar, “and get you both out of this godforsaken place.”

Sam felt himself begin to well up. Al might be kind of loud and prone to in-your-face bluster and lurid revelations about his love life, but when it came down to it, he was an extremely private man about the things that really mattered to him. He may make light of it, but allowing someone to mess around with his mind had to have him totally freaked out. 

“You’re sure you’re ok with this?” he pressed

“Sam, shut up jabbering about it before I change my mind. Besides, there’s something else that means we have no choice but to try it.”

Sam looked at him questioningly.

Al said nothing, merely grinned his lopsided grin at him.

“What are you up to?” Sam frowned.

“Spock is pretty much the cleverest son of a gun I ever met,” Al said, waving the control panel in the air, “no offence,” he added.

“None taken,” Sam waved off the remark impatiently. “Tell me.”

“Ok, ok,” the admiral said, failing to hide the excitement in his voice. “I know you think we haven’t found out much while you’ve been here, but the thing is we think that if you and Kirk can fix time and get back to the planet that sent you here, we can use this Guardian of Forever to get you home.”

Sam stared at him. “How?” he finally managed to force out.

“Spock has a theory that you’ve managed to leap into the future because of the ripples through time being caused by the Guardian.”

Sam frowned. “But,” he began.

“Wait, wait,” Al continued impatiently. “He thinks that the waves from the Guardian could have accidentally intersected somehow with Project Quantum Leap and sort of shunted you off course.”

Sam felt a growing sense of relief. “So if I’m here my mistake, then I’m not here to make sure she dies?”

Al seemed to deflate before his eyes. “I didn’t say that, Sam, just that you might not be here to do anything other than what Spock would do.”

Sam took a deep breath. “I’m not here to change anything.” He looked around the shabby room. “This is just something I got caught up in by chance?”

Al nodded and Sam frowned and sat down heavily on the bed. He looked up to meet Al’s eyes. “But, if Spock were here, he’d let her die?”

Al nodded reluctantly. “If it was the only way to save millions of lives, to save the future of the whole world, yes he would.” He moved close to Sam. “And so would you,” he added softly. “You’d have to.” 

“And the payback is that I get to go home?” Sam choked out. “Is that supposed to make it ok?”

“No,” Al said, “of course it isn’t,” he paused. “It’s just all I can do, Sam.”

Sam looked up at him and saw the look in his friend’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, wiping the back of his hand over his eyes. “How?” 

Al looked down at the control module in his hand, a slight tremor in his voice as he continued. “Ziggy and Spock think that the Guardian is a sentient being. It helped you and Kirk get back here to try to put right what McCoy changed and they think that it could have the power to send you back home.”

“And if I leap out of here first?” Sam questioned.

“Then that’s it,” Al grimaced. “We’re back to where we always are - you leaping through time and space with no control over where and when you end up.”

“And what happens to Spock if the Guardian sends me home?”

“There’s no reason why he wouldn’t just return his rightful place, the same way anyone you leap into does once you move on.”

Sam’s stared at his feet as he tried to make sense of it all. “The Guardian is a gateway to all history,” he said quietly as he thought through all the variables that could be involved in this. “So if we used the tricorder to record history like we did before and pinpointed the exact moment when I first stepped into the projector accelerator, I could ask the Guardian to return me moments later.” He got to his feet and started pacing up and down. “Then I would be home but everything we’ve changed would remain changed.” He turned to Al. “Everything we’ve put right would stay right. Yeah?”

Al nodded. “That’s the idea.”

Sam frowned as another thought occurred to him. “I’d have to step into the Guardian before I leap.”

“Yes, but if you’re here by accident, that doesn’t matter. And we can’t guarantee you will leap, Sam, whatever you do. If you’re here by accident then this could be the only way to leave. You usually don’t leap until you’ve done whatever it is you’re supposed to do, but if there’s nothing you’re supposed to do, you might both be stuck - you and Spock.”

Sam shook his head. “But what if Spock’s wrong? What if I am supposed to be here? What if there is something that I’m supposed to put right?”

Al groaned. “Sam, stop trying to be a martyr! Why does it always have to be up to you to fix everything for everyone except yourself? This is your ticket home. Don’t you understand?”

Sam forced a wan smile. “I understand, Al, I just need to know for sure that it’s the right thing to do.”

Al started pressing buttons. “Ok,” he said. “The sooner we get started, the better.” The door opened. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

“Al,” Sam reached out a hand. “Thank you.” 

 

~*~ *~ *~

 

Seeing the person he’d leaped into looking back at him wasn’t something that Sam had the chance to do very often, at least not without the presence of a mirror, so when Spock stepped through the doorway next to Al, he couldn’t help but stare. 

Spock looked back at him and inclined his head slightly in greeting. “Dr Beckett, I presume?” he said, without the slightest hint of irony.

Sam ignored Al’s snort of laughter and smiled at the newcomer. It was weird. Ever since he’d read up on Vulcans in the ship’s library, he’d been trying his level best to ensure that no emotion showed on his face, but looking at Spock he knew now that he’d been getting it wrong. It wasn’t an absence of emotion he saw, although the lines of the face were perfectly impassive, it was emotion kept in check, controlled no doubt through years of practice and cultural conditioning. Sam had got used to learning to read people quickly and everyone had something that gave them away; with Spock it was the eyes. His eyes looked worried.

“Spock,” he acknowledged. “Am I pleased to see you.”

Spock frowned slightly. “I would not presume to know the affect of my being here upon your emotional state,” he intoned. 

Sam glanced at Al, confused, and the hologram rolled his eyes. “Take no notice, Sam,” he said. “He’s pulling your leg. He knows exactly what you mean.”

Spock threw him a suspicious look. “I can assure you Admiral, Vulcans do not make a habit of ‘pulling legs’.”

“Yeah, right,” Al began, a glint in his eye.

“Ok,” Sam interrupted, as Al looked set to continue. “Is this,” he waved a hand from Al to Spock, “working ok?”

Spock nodded curtly. “I have engaged only a light meld between myself and Admiral Calavicci to allow me to assist you. As for the means by which we have been projected here, the imaging technology is not advanced,” he said, earning a glare from the admiral, “but should be adequate to serve our purposes.”

Sam could see why Al might be finding the Vulcan a little wearing. “Well, if everything’s working as it should be, let’s take a look at this shall we?” He gestured Spock towards the makeshift circuitry he’d set up.

Spock moved in the direction Sam was pointing. “Fascinating,” he said as he bent to more closely examine the work Sam had done with the help of his remote guidance. 

Sam sat down and picked up the knife he’d been using as a tool. “Ready when you are.”

Hours later the Sam held his breath as he position the tip of a knife to make the final adjustment to the last screw. It would be now or never, Spock had said.

“Wait,” the Vulcan held up his hand and the two Humans looked questioningly at him. “The captain is returning,” he added.

Sam frowned at him and opened his mouth to ask how he knew, only to close it again when he heard telltale footfalls on the stairs outside the room. He looked over his shoulder as the handle moved and the door opened.

Kirk looked tired, as if he’d been walking constantly in the cold night air since he’d left earlier. Sam glanced over at Spock. The hologram’s eyes were fixed on Kirk, taking in every bit of him as if he’d been starved of the sight for decades not just the week or so it had actually been. Al had noticed the look as well and his eyes were flicking between Kirk and Spock, as if trying to make sense of exactly what it was he was seeing. 

Sam cleared his throat. “Captain,” he said slowly. “I think we’ve found what we’ve been looking for,” he said.

Kirk turned to him with a slightly chagrined look on his face. “ ‘We’? I’m afraid I haven’t been much of a help to you, have I?”

Sam gave a slight shake of his head to brush off the apology and looked at Kirk in concern. “You may not like what you see,” he warned, wishing to himself that Kirk could have come back into the room just a little later. He didn’t know what they might see but he had a bad feeling about it. 

Kirk pulled up a chair and sat down beside him. “Go ahead, Spock,” he sighed, one way or another, he had to know.

Sam opened his mouth to answer then suddenly felt a wave of nausea. He heard himself gasp almost as if he was some distance away from the sound. The captain’s head tilted sharply away from the tricorder screen to look at him and his face seemed to shift, his features blurring for a second before suddenly coming back into focus.

Sam reached his hands up to try to hold his whirring head steady just as Kirk reached out to grab him by the forearms. 

“Spock!” the captain shouted, his anguished voice causing Sam to gasp again as he felt a wave of distress wash over him as though it was somehow being transmitted from the man holding him.

He heard frantic beeps as Al poked at the control panel in his hand. “Sam!” Al was shouting. “What’s wrong?” he turned to his holographic companion. “Spock! What’s happening?”

Sam looked over towards the Vulcan who was swaying lightly, his eyes shut, and felt another wave of dizziness. For a moment it was as if he were seeing the room from Spock’s perspective before it abruptly switched back to his own. 

“Our thoughts…” Spock sounded as though forming the words was an effort, “…merging. Can’t. Control.”

As Sam stared at him the image of the Vulcan winked out of existence. Sam’s eyes flicked back to Kirk, who was now shaking him, his demeanour increasingly frantic but his shouts sounding muffled.

“Fascinating,” Sam heard the word he’d spoken but knew it was Spock who had said it. Strangely, if this was indeed the merging Spock had warned of, it wasn’t frightening at all. He and the Vulcan seemed to be existing together, but it didn’t seem complete. There was a feeling of duality but not of being taken over, as though part of Spock had found its way into his mind when the image of the Vulcan disappeared but only to focus solely on Kirk.

The captain looked impossibly perfect in a way he hadn’t to Sam alone. It was as though the already handsome reality had been elevated to something extraordinary. It wasn’t that Spock didn’t see Kirk as he was, Sam could sense that the Vulcan was not only well aware of his friend’s faults, his fears, his foibles but viewed them as part of what made him admirable. Spock knew of Kirk’s impetuosity and impatience. He was amused by his little touches of vanity. He understood his insecurities, the way he feared losing his ship and sometimes bowed but never buckled under the weight of responsibility on his shoulders. To Spock those things were a part of Kirk, part of what made him so precious - and so loved, so very loved.

Sam felt his eyes spring to startled wideness as the revelation hit him: Spock was in love with Kirk. He was completely, utterly, head over heels, crazy in love with his captain.

He unthinkingly reached a hand out towards Kirk then a sudden wave of nausea hit him. He doubled over and Spock’s presence in his mind vanished. He gulped and forced himself to straighten up just in time to see the holographic Vulcan reappear.

“What the hell did you do to him?” Al immediately started shouting at the Vulcan.

Sam stared from Spock to Kirk and back again, feeling dizzy and disorientated. Kirk was looking at him in horrified confusion. He opened his mouth then caught the frantic look in the Vulcan’s eyes and closed it again.

“Spock,” Kirk yelled again. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Sam gulped and met the captain’s eyes. “Sorry, sorry. I’m ok now.”

Kirk frowned at the words. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes,” Sam forced out and looked towards the screen of the tricorder he was still holding. 

Kirk took a deep breath. “Go ahead, Spock.”

With another concerned glance towards Spock, whose eyes were still fixed on Kirk, Sam made the last movement needed, and the screen flickered into life. Images flashed up as the jury-rigged equipment tried to do achieve the monumental task they’d asked of it. 

The newspaper reports flashed up: Edith Keeler, leader of the peace movement; delayed US entry into the Second World War; the triumph of Nazism. His memory might be faulty, but even Sam knew how wrong that was.

Kirk stared at the screen, watching history he knew could never be. “But she was right,” he whispered, “peace was the way.”

Sam closed his eyes. “She was right,” he answered, wishing with all his being that it wasn’t true, “but at the wrong time. All this allows Germany to develop the A bomb first. Germany and fascism captures the world. All this because McCoy came back in time and somehow stopped her from dying in a road accident, like she was supposed to.” 

He glanced up at Al who was staring at the tricorder. He nodded at Sam’s look. “It has to be that,” he confirmed.

“How does she die?” Kirk asked abruptly, standing and turning his back to Sam. “What day?” 

Sam looked over at Spock, who gave a slight shake of the head.

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “This is only giving me general events. It isn’t as precise as that.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

Kirk wrapped his arms around himself, grief and tension written all over the lines of his back and shoulders .

Sam stood up and took a step towards him. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what…”

“No,” Kirk turned at the uncharacteristic stuttering words. He stared at his first officer and hardly recognised him. He’d seen Spock’s concern for him a million times before in so many tiny gestures, but the look on his face was all wrong, his words were all wrong. 

“Spock,” he said questioningly, then paused and took a deep breath. “I believe I’m in love with Edith Keeler.” He wasn’t sure if what he said was true or if he just needed to see Spock’s reaction.

Sam looked around at Spock. The Vulcan stood motionless, hadn’t moved since the conversation began. Their eyes met. “Say it,” Spock whispered. “He needs to hear you say it.”

“Captain,” Sam said. “Edith Keeler must die.”

Kirk closed his eyes. Now, in this moment, Spock chose to retreat into titles and formality. Hurt upon hurt and the one person he could rely on, the only person he had left, was pulling away from him.

“I need to get out,” he said, moving towards the door. He felt claustrophobic, as though the room itself were swallowing him whole. He pulled on the door handle and slipped out as quickly as he could.

Sam and Al turned as one to stare at Spock, whose stricken eyes were fixed on the door through which Kirk had abruptly departed, as if no one else were in the room.

Sam moved towards him. “You love him,” he said accusingly, “and you’ve never told him.”

Spock tore his eyes away from the door as if with difficulty and turned his gaze to the man who had taken his place. “Vulcans,” he said steadily. “Do not love.”

Before Sam could reply, the holographic Vulcan winked out of existence. 

Sam turned towards Al who’d watched the scene unfold with eyes wide. “Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. “What a mess.”

Sam turned to pick up his coat. “I’ll go after Kirk. You go check on Spock.”

 

~*~*~*~

“So, you’re in love with your captain, huh?” Al said to the back of the Vulcan, who seemed intent on trying to ignore his arrival in the waiting room.

“As I said previously, Admiral,” came the flat response. “Vulcans do not love.”

Al snorted in derision. “Oh pull the other one,” he said. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Why don’t you just come out and say it?”

Spock whirled around to face him, his anger making his posture rigid and his features set. “You heard what he said,” he spat out. “He is in love with someone else.” 

He took a deep breath. “My ‘feelings’ on the matter are, in any case, irrelevant,” he continued, aware he was not entirely succeeding in controlling himself but finding it hard to care. “And I find your insistence that I should react as a Human being when I am not to be insulting and illogical.”

“Illogical?!” Al yelled back. “Illogical is standing there denying what’s perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain!”

The two men stood inches apart, fury radiating off both of them as if it were a living, breathing dragon they’d unleashed from captivity. Spock regained control and turned away first.

“It is not relevant,” he said again.

Al found himself staring at the Vulcan’s back once more. He let out a frustrated huff of air. “Jesus, Spock. You don’t know that it isn’t relevant. How do you know that Sam isn’t supposed to make sure you and Kirk get together? We’ve never even considered the possibility because you never saw fit to share that little gem with us!” 

Spock turned around slowly and this time the only emotion Al could see in the perfectly composed face was the pain in his eyes. 

“He is my closest friend,” he said, “if he were homosexual, don’t you think I would know?”

Al met the haunted gaze and sighed. “Yeah,” he agreed, the fight suddenly gone out of him, “I guess you would.”

 

~*~*~*~

 

Kirk ran along the streets in the cold night air. The sounds of the city buzzing around him, crowding in on the words that were going round and round in his head, different voices clamouring to be heard, shouting over each other to be the loudest.

“The Enterprise…she’s gone.”

“We must stop McCoy.”

“Edith Keeler must die…”

“Captain.”

“Let me help.”

A choked sob ripped from his lungs as he ran up the street, not caring where he was heading or what he was doing, hardly seeing the startled people who leapt out of his way as he hurtled along the sidewalk.

He didn’t know where he was going until he reached the mission. He stood in front of the big glass window behind which was the now darkened dining room where he and Spock had been working some shifts, helping serve the countless people in this time and place who didn’t even have enough money to feed themselves or pay for a roof over their heads. He pressed his forehead against the glass. He felt as hopeless as they must. What the fuck was he supposed to do? 

How the hell could he stand back and let her die? That wasn’t what he’d signed up to StarFleet for. He knew making tough decisions was part of the job but this was one decision too far. If he let this happen, how could he ever live with himself? 

“Captain,” he heard a voice call behind him and turned to see the approaching form of his first officer.

Sam drew to a halt in front of Kirk. He didn’t know what to say or do to comfort him. What words could begin to make sense of this?

Kirk stared the man who was closer to him than anyone, or who he had thought was closer to him until the past few weeks. He’d never felt so alone. “What?” he snapped.

After running to catch up with the captain, Sam found that now he was faced with him, he didn’t know what to say. “You love her?” he offered awkwardly, echoes of the feeling he’d felt from Spock still in his mind.

Kirk closed his eyes. “I said so, didn’t I?” he said. He opened his eyes again after a moment and met those of the man in front of him. He gave a sad, half-smile. “She’s really something, Spock. You know what she said to me?”

Sam shook his head silently. 

“She said she knows I don’t belong here.” He gulped down a sob. “She knew where you belonged, though.” He paused. “At my side,” the words came out more like an accusation than anything else.

Sam felt himself involuntarily moving towards Kirk. The man’s pain was palpable and he didn’t know what to do to ease it, what to do about any of this.

Kirk gave a choked laugh. “It used to be like that, didn’t it?” he suddenly burst out, accusingly. “But now you don’t have time for me any more. You…” He broke off suddenly as he realised what he was saying, what he might say if he continued.

Sam stared at him in shock and Kirk lowered his eyes and turned away abruptly. He’d promised himself he’d never say anything that even hinted at how he felt about Spock. Christ knows what his friend would think if he knew, and Kirk couldn’t bear to lose him, even if it meant he could never have what he truly wanted. 

“Jim,” Sam reached out towards him, but then a familiar sound cut through the cold night air.

“Sam,” Al’s voice urgently interrupted from behind him. “It’s tonight. She dies tonight.”

Sam looked frantically around. There was a flurry of beeps and buzzes as Al tried to prise some more specific information out of Ziggy. 

“Now, Sam. It’s now!” Al shouted.

Then it all happened so quickly.

McCoy appears through a door.

Edith across the street.

A car.

McCoy moves. Kirk moves faster.

A screech of brakes.

A dull thud.

Jim. 

Sam.

What have I done? 

 

~*~*~*~

 

Suddenly they were back on the planet, facing the landing party they had left behind what seemed a lifetime ago.

What happened, Sir?” Scotty asked Kirk, confusion written all over his face. “You only left a moment ago.”

“Time is as it was before,” the Guardian’s deep voice echoed around them, and Sam turned slowly to stare at the big stone structure speaking words that could have been used to explain his very existence. “Many such journeys are possible,” it continued. “Let me be your gateway…”

“Captain,” Uhura interrupted. “The Enterprise is up there.”

Sam felt his heart pounding with the awfulness of what had just happened. His insides felt as though they were turning in on themselves as his eye caught Kirk’s. The captain gave him a look of hollow recognition that echoed the emptiness inside him. Sam watched as he visibly shut down the hurt before he turned deliberately back to the excitedly happy faces of his crew, the only thing showing on his face the duty that would always call to him.

“Sam. Sam!” 

Al’s urgent voice pulled him back to the here and now, away from the sound of screeching brakes that kept searing through the planes of his mind as if it would never go away. With an effort he turned to his friend.

“Sam,” Al repeated, an edge of panic in his voice. “It has to be now before Kirk orders you all back to the ship.”

Sam turned towards the Guardian and spotted the holographic image of the Vulcan standing beside the massive stone structure, seemingly deep in conversation with it. Apparently giant doughnut-like time portals had no need to be in tune with the brainwaves of a hologram to see it. Sam supposed Spock was asking for its co-operation in returning an errant time traveller to his home. He took one step towards it, then another. His legs felt as though they were moving of their own accord, as if they belonged to someone else, but he kept being propelled numbly forwards. 

He drew to a halt next to the Vulcan and the time portal that could mean an end to the jumping he had began to fear would be without end. He looked from one to the other. “Is this it?” he asked Spock.

The Vulcan met his gazed for a moment then abruptly lowered his eyes. “It is time,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

“Wait” Sam insisted. “You need to tell him how you feel about him.”

Spock folded his hands behind his back and fixed him with an implacable stare. “No,” he said coldly. “I do not need to do anything.”

“But maybe he feels the same way, he…”

Spock held up a hand to stop him. Such speculation was pointless and served only to deepen a wound that he had long learned to live with. He sighed. “I have often found, Dr Beckett, that what will be, will be, despite your best efforts to the contrary.”

“I came to bid you a journey without incident,” he continued, “and to express my regret for what happened during the meld. My lack of control was inexcusable.” 

Sam shook his head and opened his mouth to try again but Spock was closed off, unreachable. 

The Vulcan held up his right hand in a salute. “Live long and prosper,” he said and was gone before Sam could say another word.

Sam frowned at the empty space the Vulcan had occupied a moment before. “To say goodbye, or to make sure I left?” he murmured quietly to himself.

He turned slowly towards the hologram who’d moved to stand beside him. “Al,” he said. “Why am I still here?”

“What do you mean?” his friend said then clocked the look of renewed determination on Sam’s face. “Oh, no you don’t, Sam.” He gestured at the Guardian, which was showing reels of history that were becoming more and more familiar. “This is your chance!”

“No, Al, listen,” Sam said quickly. “I don’t believe this was an accident after all.” 

His brain worked quickly as he looked around at the dusty planet, the time portal. He considered all the worried looks he’d been on the receiving end of from Kirk, the teasing and hints of flirting, the little touches that had been there before the captain had started to withdraw from him as he himself tried to maintain a Vulcan aloofness. All those indicators of closeness that he was sure he hadn’t imagined; and the way Kirk unknowingly pulled him close at night as he slept, smiled in his sleep in a way he hadn’t when awake.

He thought about the look of anguished determination he was sure he’d seen on Spock’s face as he’d vanished and the pieces began to fall into place. 

“Sam,” Al began warningly as he saw the look on his friend’s face.

“No, Al, listen,” Sam blurted out. “You were right when you said Spock was the cleverest son of a gun you ever met. He doesn’t want me to interfere but what if I’m supposed to? Al, what if I’m here to help him?” 

He jerked his head back towards where Kirk was standing with the other Enterprise crew members. “To help both of them?” He paused as he saw a look flash across Al’s face and a suspicion crept across his mind. “You know don’t you?” he accused.

Al chewed on his bottom lip, a dead giveaway as far as Sam was concerned.

Sam whirled around to stare at the Enterprise crewmen, who were now looking over curiously. “I’m right, aren’t I?” He challenged Al, no longer caring if the others saw him talking to himself. “Whatever I’m here to do, I haven’t done it yet,” he added, “and you knew it and didn’t tell me!”

Al shook his head. “I only suspected,” he protested, “and I knew if I told you, you’d do this, that’s why,” he exclaimed.

Sam glared at him. “It’s not your choice, Al,” he said determinedly. “I’m not done here yet.”

“Sam, can’t you just leave it alone?” Al insisted. “Just this once, will you stop trying to put everything right, and come home? They don’t even want it put right! You’ve saved the planet, they’ll go off across the galaxy as best buddies and everything will be just fine. You don’t need to do this!” 

Sam sighed as he took in his friend’s stricken look. “No,” he said softly. As turned to walk back towards Kirk he could feel the tumultuous echo of Spock’s feelings within his mind as clearly as he could see the stricken look on Kirk’s face as he stood in that shabby New York street. 

“I can’t,” he said, as sure as he could be that he was right about how the two of them really felt about each other, despite their efforts to hide it from each other. “I’m sorry. I can’t leave before I fix what I’m here to fix.” He gave the hologram a sad smile. “Run the figures, Al.”

Al groaned as he watched his closest friend walk away from what could be his best, his only, chance to get home. He jabbed at the control panel in his hand and shook his head as the figures told him what he’d already been sure in his heart of hearts that they would.

Sam walked over to stand next to the captain, who acknowledged him with a slight nod, neither he nor anyone else commenting on Spock’s new habit of talking to thin air. 

Kirk looked skywards. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, the tone a cold slab of heartbreak.

 

~*~*~*~

Al marched out of the imaging chamber, his eyes fixed on the target of his wrath. If fury had visible form, his would have been a tornado, whirling towards the cause of all his current problems.

He drew to a halt in front of Spock, who infuriated him still further by raising a questioning eyebrow as if he had no idea what might have prompted such a palpable rage.

Al snorted. “Don’t even try it, buster,” he yelled. “I’m on to you.”

Spock regarded him with a level gaze. “On to me?” he questioned.

“Yeah,” Al said, stabbing a finger in the air for emphasis. “I. Am on. To you.”

Spock said nothing, merely waited for the tirade to continue, an event for which he did not have to wait long. 

“You have just ruined Sam’s chance to get home,” the admiral shouted. “Because of you, my best friend be lost in time for ever. Because of you his wife may never see him again. And if you think I’m gonna let it be for nothing, then you’ve got another think coming!”

Spock, visibly paler, stared at him. “Dr Beckett did not take the chance to use the Guardian to return to his own time?” 

“Of course he didn’t leave, you nitwit,” he yelled, waving his cigar in Spock’s face, practically jumping up and down in his ire. “Or you wouldn’t still be here, would you?”

Spock, startled by his failure to make such a basic connection of facts, only just pulled himself together enough to raise a half-hearted eyebrow. “I do not understand,” he said flatly. “Why would he make such a choice?”

Al groaned. “Because he’s too damn honourable for his own good, that’s why,” he muttered to himself. Spock’s frown deepened as Al spoke more loudly. “Because he couldn’t leave without fixing what’s gone wrong.” He flung his arms out in despair. “That’s Sam, fixated on the good of everyone but himself.”

“But what good will it do him to remain?” Spock asked, desperately hoping the answer wouldn’t be what he suspected it would be.

It was Al’s turn to raise his eyebrows. He stabbed at the control interface in his hand for a few moments, entering the same data as he had on the Guardian’s planet. The device whirred then bleeped as it came up with the probabilities for the scenario he had just entered. 

“Look at it,” he said, waving the device under Spock’s nose. “An 74.5 per cent probability that this wasn’t an accident, that Sam leaped into your life to make sure that you tell your captain that you’re in love with him. I’d be willing to bet my caboodle that he’s planning on doing just that.”

Spock’s already whitened face lost another shade of colour as he stared at the 20th century admiral who was fast becoming a nemesis every bit as confounding and irritating as McCoy. “That cannot happen,” he whispered, his voice strained and hoarse. “I will not allow it.”

Al popped the cigar back into his mouth and bounced on his toes in a manner that almost made Spock groan out loud at his bad luck to encounter two such Humans in one lifetime. 

“Doesn’t seem to me like you have much of a choice, Sunshine,” Al pointed out. “Not unless you want to stay here for ever.”

“You cannot simply walk into someone’s life and dictate how it should be changed,” Spock retorted, not even noticing the anger that leached into his tone. “It is not logical to tell him something that can only hurt him further, that can only damage the friendship we have. I will not allow it!” he repeated, taking a threatening step towards the Human.

Al stood his ground. “Now look,” he said. “If you love him at least have the courage to tell him and let him make his own decisions. You say it’s for his own good because he’s not gay, but that’s not it at all, is it? You haven’t even asked him, and all because you’re too damn scared.

“This is all about you, and don’t tell me that’s it’s not. You’re a coward, pure and simple. All that’s stopping you is some Vulcan mumbo jumbo about not showing your emotions and if that is more important to you than he is, then you don’t deserve him and you certainly don’t deserve what Sam’s willing to give up for you.”

All the fight drained out of Spock at the words. Suddenly he felt so weary of it all, too tired to keep up this pretence any more. All he wanted was to return to his captain’s side, to see him, be with him. If he told him and was denied, what of it. At least he would know once and for all and this torture could stop. It seemed as though there were little alternative in any case. He would not condemn another being to living in the peculiar purgatory he had created for himself and he could not remain in this place, out of time, indefinitely.

Al watched as the proud, stern Vulcan wrapped his arms around himself and turned away, seeming suddenly like a small, vulnerable child facing a desolate world. He sighed. He just couldn’t carry on being angry at someone who seemed so alone. 

“You have to tell him, Spock, he said gently. “And give him the courtesy of deciding what he wants to do about it. He deserves that much,” he paused. “And he will find someone who’ll love him if you won’t, Edith proved that.” 

Spock took a deep breath and forced his hands down to his sides as he turned to face the admiral. “I wish to go home,” he said simply.

 

~*~*~*~

 

Sam paused outside the captain’s quarters. He didn’t know if what he planned to do was a good idea or not but he remembered the look on Kirk’s face as they beamed back to the ship, and on Spock’s as he vanished back to the waiting room, and knew he had to try. He took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer to the side of the door. 

“Come,” said the voice from inside.

The door slid open and Sam stepped through. Kirk looked up from where he was sitting on his bunk and gave him a wan smile. “Spock,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

Sam noted lines around Kirk’s eyes that he had not previously seen there, the weary slope of his shoulders. The Human looked as though he hadn’t had a moment’s sleep since they’d got back from the planet they’d designated Gateway and, despite the smile, there was a haunted look on his face. 

“I came to see if you’re all right,” he answered.

Kirk’s expression was unreadable. “You didn’t need to do that, Spock,” he said finally. He swung his legs around over the side of the bed and rested his forearms on his thighs. He sighed wearily. “I’ll be fine,” he added. 

He looked up at his friend’s concerned face and made an attempt at a slightly brighter smile. He felt sick when he thought about the way he’d spoken to Spock on Earth. Spock, who’d only ever been the best of friends to him. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know and couldn’t possibly understand the nature of his captain’s feelings for him. The guilt mixed and merged with the horror of what had happened to Edith. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t fix one but he could have a damn good try at the other. 

“Spock,” he began. “I’m sorry. I never should have said what I did. You’ve always been there for me and I had no right to say otherwise.”

Sam stared at him for a moment. He looked so desolate, so alone and in need of a friend. Sam began to move towards him, driven by a basic Human instinct to reach out to comfort someone in need. Kirk looked up at him in surprise and Sam stopped. Suddenly he felt unsure. Taking this last step seemed presumptuous somehow, and awkward. It wasn’t that Kirk was a man, he was fine with that, but he always felt a bit weird about starting something with someone who thought he was someone else. Besides which, he still wasn’t 100 per cent sure and these two men were so private, both seemingly convinced they shouldn’t start anything.

Kirk frowned as Spock hovered in front of him, seemingly about to say something but unsure how to start. 

“Are you all right?” he tried. Maybe now he’d be able to get to the bottom of what had been bothering his first officer. With everything that had happened while they were in the past, he’d never got the chance to question him about his strange behaviour.

Sam opened his mouth to answer then stopped as he heard the familiar sound of the quantum door just behind him. His eyes flicked momentarily to his right, just enough to take in the arrival of not one, but two holograms.

“Sam,” Al said quietly. “Spock wants to try to recreate what happened back on Earth. We think it might kick-start the leap.”

Sam glanced over at the Vulcan, aware of Kirk curiously following his gaze. He nodded in Spock’s direction and closed his eyes.

The duality was the same as before. He could feel Spock inside his mind, but it wasn’t threatening to overtake him. He gladly relinquished control and felt the other’s gratitude for that.

Spock stared at his captain, drinking in the sight of him. His heart was pounding in his chest, a decidedly odd sensation for a being whose heart resided in the place where one would find the liver in a Human.

“Spock?” Kirk questioned. “What’s the matter?”

Spock took a deep breath. “Jim,” he said. “I have something I must tell you.”

Sam felt the familiar quantum pull begin to take him and out of the corner of his eye saw Al nod in confirmation. As he began to leap into the next unknown he thanked his lucky stars that wherever he went, whatever happened to him, Al would follow. He closed his eyes.

‘Goodbye Spock,’ Al spoke in the seconds he had before he was pulled out of there by a force he wouldn’t be able to resist. ‘Look after him.’ 

‘I would offer you the same advice,’ came the soft reply, then everything went black as he followed Sam.

 

~*~*~*~

 

Kirk looked worriedly at his first officer. “Spock?” he questioned again. “What is it?”

Back in his own mind and body and in his rightful place, Spock felt momentarily disconcerted. 

Kirk reached out to take his arm and gently shake him. “Is something wrong?” he pressed. “You know you can tell me anything.”

Spock took a deep breath. “I would tell you this,” he said and, not quite finding the words to complete the sentence, leaned forward to press his lips to his captain’s. 

Immediately he had done it he pulled back and stared down at the tips of his boots. He felt strangely calm. The deed was done. For better or worse, he could not take it back. His captain would know the depths of his shame, the way he had taken their friendship and sullied it with his illogical wants and needs. He had done what he had to do to be returned to the side of the one he valued above all others and to allow Dr Beckett the chance to continue his journey. Now he could only hope that Kirk would be able to forgive him his transgression and continue to allow his presence on the Enterprise.

He forced himself to look up and meet startled hazel eyes. “I am sorry,” he said.

“Sorry,” Kirk managed to get out through his shock, touching his fingertips wonderingly to his lips. “Why are you sorry?”

“I value your friendship more than you can know,” Spock continued. “I do not wish to leave the Enterprise…”

“Hang on just a damn minute,” Kirk said, putting up a hand to halt the Vulcan’s words. “Who said anything about leaving the Enterprise?”

Spock folded his hands behind his back. “I had assumed you would not wish…” he tailed off, unsure what the look on Kirk’s face meant. “Captain?” he questioned.

“Spock,” Kirk’s voice was all commanding, despite his confusion. “What did that kiss mean?” he demanded. “That you’re pleased to see me? That you feel sorry for me? What?”

Spock paled. He did not know how to conduct this conversation, had not imagined anything beyond telling him and being gently but firmly rebuffed. He opened his mouth and then closed it again. Kirk was staring at him, his gaze appearing more belligerent by the minute as Spock failed to answer his questions. ‘Oh to hell with it,’ Spock thought. He’d gone this far, he might as well admit the truth. He pulled his back as straight as it would go, took a deep breath and stared at a point just above Kirk’s left shoulder. 

“It means I am homosexual, I find you attractive to the exclusion of all others, and I am in love with you.” The words came out in a headlong rush. Spock gulped and forced himself to meet Kirk’s eyes. “Sir,” he added, realising how inappropriate the appellation was under the circumstances only in the moment it left his lips.

Kirk felt himself gaping in shock but found he was unable to do much else for the moment. “Spock,” he finally forced out.

Spock took in the stunned expression on Kirk’s face. “I am sorry,” he repeated miserably.

The words shook Kirk out of his immobility. “Stop apologising,” he told him. “I…” he took a step towards Spock, then another, and the Vulcan suddenly found himself pulled into a fierce embrace.

Kirk was instantly hard. The feel of Spock’s body against his own was indescribable. 

All of a sudden they were pulling at each other’s clothes with an urgency that overtook anything else. Their mouths found each other, Kirk’s tongue forcing Spock’s lips apart, their teeth grazing with the force of it. 

Spock felt all rational thought leave him. He shoved his hands up under the gold shirt, pinching hard nipples, moving around to scratch nails across a broad back, his mind lost in a frenzy of desire. He heard himself making desperate little sounds that he couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to.

The noises Spock was making into his mouth drove Kirk wild. He couldn’t get enough. He felt as though he wanted to crawl inside him, hold him forever in his body, his mind, his soul - anything, anywhere as long as he was always there. He pulled back and reached down to his own crotch, to the clasp on the pants that were now feeling rather restrictive.

Spock focussed on the captain’s hand and what it was doing.

Kirk noted the gaze and deliberately slowed his actions, undoing the fastenings gradually as Spock stared intently. He threw his head back, the rapt attention on his crotch from his normally so staid first officer almost enough to make him come there and then, like a horny teenager. He reached out and grabbed Spock’s hand, pulled him roughly forwards and forced his hand against the hard shaft.

Spock drew in a sharp breath. He looked up to meet hazel eyes that were now looking directly at his face and he began to move his hand slowly up and down against the hardness.

“Oh,” Kirk breathed. “Oh god, Spock.” He moved forward and allowed his head to fall onto the Vulcan’s shoulder. The feeling of being against him, of allowing himself to be lost in this moment and to forget all that had gone before was a relief beyond measure. 

Spock moved one hand around to the small of Kirk’s back, anchoring him in place. He allowed the other to slip down under the waistband of Kirk’s pants and into his briefs. The tip of his penis was slippery and moist and Spock circled his thumb in the wetness, hardly able to believe what he was doing. 

“Yes,” Kirk hissed and started thrusting impatiently against Spock’s hand. The Vulcan instinctively moved to hold him, forming a tight tunnel for him to thrust into. He moved his other hand down to fondle the tight ass and Kirk groaned again. “Oh God, what are you doing to me. Like that. Oh, Spock. Don’t stop. I…” He threw his head back and groaned as he spurted his seed into Spock’s hand, wave after wave of liquid pulsing out of the hot, throbbing hardness.

Spock lowered his head and began frantically kissing him, his own penis now begging for attention, the hardness of it almost painful. 

Kirk was moving backwards, dragging him towards the bed, not once breaking away from their frantic kisses. The Human fell onto the soft surface and pulled Spock on top of him. Spock was lost. He could do nothing but thrust helplessly against him. This feeling, it was like nothing he had ever experienced. He heard a whimper come from his lips and couldn’t even feel ashamed of it.

“It’s ok,” Kirk was saying. “Hang on. Let me…”

Then Spock’s pants and underwear were shoved unceremoniously down out of the way and Kirk must have done the same to his own because suddenly his penis was against bare skin. Spock thrust again, slippery against the wetness of Kirk’s now semi-hardness. He felt hands reach to grab his buttocks and hold him firm and he began to thrust in earnest.

“Oh,” he said as he felt orgasm overwhelm him. “Oh, Jim. Jim. Jim.” His seed spilled over his lover’s flesh and finally he stilled, breathing hard, and flopped bonelessly onto the body below his, bringing his head to rest against the cool Human shoulder. Kirk put his arms around him and held him tightly, as though he’d never let him go.

The two of them clung together for long moments, their cooling bodies spent and entwined.

Eventually Kirk reached up to smooth the soft silky hair behind an elegantly pointed ear, his other arm holding his lover close. He pressed a kiss onto the top of his head.

“You are amazing, mister,” he said wonderingly.

“As are you…captain,” Spock offered, “I had not anticipated,” he broke off. He seemed uncharacteristically unable to finish a sentence this evening.

Kirk’s breath caught in his throat. His straight-laced first officer lost for words to describe a mind-blowing sexual encounter was probably the most endearing thing he’d ever heard, and a total turn on. He moved to urge the Vulcan upwards. 

Spock moved without complaint, pushing himself slightly upwards so he was looking down into Kirk’s eyes.

“Kiss me?” the Human asked, his expression as vulnerable as Spock had ever seen it.

Spock moved to comply, touching the tip of his tongue to the soft pink lips. They parted at his urging and he moved his tongue inside the delicious wetness of Kirk’s mouth. 

Kirk wriggled delightfully underneath him, struggling out of his uniform shirt then reaching to remove Spock’s. “God, what the hell do you do to me?” he groaned.

“Anything you want,” Spock whispered as he moved to take the luscious lips once again.

Several hours later, passion finally spent, Spock shifted slightly to ease his weight off the Human, moving to lie pressed up against his side. He looked up to see a solitary, unshed tear in the corner of Kirk’s eye. He lifted his head slightly and Kirk released his grip, turning on his side so they were face to face. He reached to draw his thumb across Spock’s lower lip.

The Vulcan allowed the tip of his tongue to touch to the digit and Kirk smiled, but there was still a sadness in the expression.

“You are thinking of Miss Keeler,” Spock said softly.

Kirk nodded, his grief palpable.

“She was a most extraordinary woman.”

Kirk nodded again, not trusting himself to speak. They lay in silence for a moment more and then he reached to lay his hand on Spock’s cheek. “I think she knew, you know,” he said softly.

“Knew what?”

Hazel eyes held brown in a steady gaze. “That I love you too.”

 

~*~*~*~

 

Kirk and Spock lay in Kirk’s bunk on the Enterprise, holding tightly on to each other, both keenly aware of how quickly time can run out and how easily the wrong path can be followed while the right one is missed. Spock silently thanked the time traveller who had pushed him into doing what he had never been able to do on his own and hoped he would safely find his own road home.

Back in his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett found himself sprawled on a dusty floor. He opened one eye and peered around, only to close it again as he spotted the boots of what looked like a prize fighter homing in on him. “Oh boy,” he spluttered.

On Gateway, the Guardian hummed in tune with the melody of the waves of time that made the universe what it was. It kept what passed as one of its eyes on the being who sailed on the waves, heading not for home but for the destiny he hadn’t yet realised was that which he’d chosen for himself.

And back on Earth, Admiral Al Calavicci lay back against the black silk pillows and lifted a glass of champagne to his lips as he looked fondly at the woman smiling up at him. The strawberries and bunny girl outfit had definitely been worth the wait.

~*~*~*~

__

_Goodnight, sweetheart, till we meet tomorrow.  
Goodnight, sweetheart, sleep will banish sorrow.  
Tears and parting may make us forlorn,  
But with the dawn, a new day is born.  
So I'll say goodnight, sweetheart, though I'm not beside you,  
Goodnight, sweetheart, still my love will guide you,  
Dreams enfold you, in each one I'll hold you.  
Goodnight, sweetheart, goodnight_

Jimmy Campbell, Ray Noble and Reg Connelly, 1931.


End file.
